Practising what we preach as Club coaches and teachers to show the kids how to do it, 14 masters swimmers represented Gainsborough Dolphins at Grantham Swimming Clubs 90th Anniversary Masters gala on the 29th March. The age ranged from 18 up to the more mature swimmer aged 53 (although this is not the oldest competitive swimmer that represents Gainsborough Dolphins). This event gave Masters debuts to Tonicha Watson, Chris Gillyett and Sarah Ashurst who accompanied Tony Bindon, Rachel Crabtree, Damon Butters, Kate Jackson, Adrian Cawte, James Smith, Steve Morris, Nick Ward-Lowery, Jeanette Morris, Freya Ward-Lowery and Ian Hansford to make up the 14 man squad.
Competing against swimmers from City of Lincoln (combined Pentaqua and Vulcans), Louth, Deepings and Grantham Swimming Club the overall results were:
| City of Lincoln | 235 |
| Louth | 139 |
| Gainsborough Dolphins | 116.5 |
| Deepings | 111 |
| Grantham | 102.5 |
This was a brilliant result for GD, given we had no swimmers for 14 out of the 44 races (nearly a 1/3 of the overall races) due to the gala falling at the start of the Easter holidays and many swimmers being unavailable.
This all resulted in our swimmers claiming:
| 5th places | 3 |
| 4th places | 7 |
| 3rd places | 10 |
| 2nd places | 3 |
| 1st places | 6 |
The final race was a 12×25 mixed club cannon. Each lane had a variety of age swimmers from each club, a good way to socialise and mix with some of swimmers from the other clubs. The winners were rewarded a little trophy of a Cadburys cream egg!!
Not to be out done by the kids who represent Dolphins with their visits to McDonald’s after their galas to celebrate their victories, the masters squad and accompanying supporters celebrated their success with an Indian and a few beverages (of the alcoholic kind – we do have to replace lost fluids after all!).
On the 26th April five of the Club’s master’s swimmers – James Smith, Nick Ward-Lowery, Ian Hansford, Rachel Crabtree and Rosi Fieldson have been selected to swim for Lincolnshire at the Regional Inter-County Masters gala at Braunstone, Leicester. Congratulations and good luck to them all.