Beavers Swimming Gala 2015

Today Joshua competed in his first ever swimming gala at the Basildon Sporting Village. The event was organised by the Beavers and Scout groups and involved him participating in three types of races, float, backstroke and freestyle. Joshua as a very strong and competent swimmer and we couldn't have been more prouder of his achievements tonight. He placed 2nd place in all three of his qualifiers to successfully make it into the finals. In the finals he ended up placing 3rd in the float, 3rd in the backstroke and a very strong 2nd in the freestyle. He was by far the strongest swimmer from his Beaver group.

 

After the finals they also did a 4 man relay race and whilst Joshua was on the anchor leg, the damage was already done by some very weak swimmers on his team and it was just far too much ground for him to make up. In fact the top two places had finished the race before Joshua had even been tagged to start his final leg!!!

 

So at the end of the event Joshua had competed in a total of 7 races. I think he will sleep well tonight!!

 

Joshua starts his first qualifying race in the float event.

Joshua gets a strong 2nd place finish in his first round of qualification in the float event.

Backstroke and another strong qualifying performance by Joshua.

Onto the front crawl and Joshua comes strong at the end to take his third 2nd place in the qualifying heats.

Back stroke final and Joshua comes in 3rd place.

Freestyle final and Joshua comes a very close second place.

 

For some strange reason Brandon's Beaver group did not support the Gala which is a bit frustrating as he would have loved this event and probably done very well. Annoyingly, Caroline who is Joshua's Beaver leader later said that she would have been happy for him to join their team even though he is in a different group. To make matters even worse we actually had Brandon's swimming kit with us tonight so he could have gone and raced had we of known before. Brandon is now talking about switching from his Beaver Club and joining Joshua's. It would certainly help with the logistics having both of them going on the same night to the same club.