News

The Otters ‘Elf in chief ’ Derrick, AKA our coach arranged a fantastic fun filled final end of year gala on Weds 19th Dec, 5 teams competed for the honour of being ‘just simply fabaroo’ and gaining the most points over the 18 events.

The teams were
The Sledgers, in Lane 4
The Blue Penguins, in Lane 3
The Elves, in Lane 2
The Snowpeople, in Lane 1
The Burnley Elves, in Lane 5

After a very exciting nights racing the scores were in..
The Sledgers won with 64 points
The Blue Penguins came second with 58 points
The Elves came third with 51 points
The Snowpeople came fourth with 49 points
The Burnley Elves came fifth with 48 points

At the end of the evening Derrick awarded some special trophies to swimmers who had impressed him over the events 18 races.
Back crawl stamina and endurance trophy winner Amelia Bailey
Best Fly away arms winner Sam Houghton
Most streamlined dive winner Saskia Hargreaves
Best off to a ‘flyer’ (went to soon) winner Katie Ackers
Best team head bobber winner Eliza Ward
Biggest doggy paddle smile winner Jasmine Wilkinson
Most gymnastic tumble turns (mid way down pool) winner Thomas Dignan
Fastest otter twistler (you had to be there!) winner Finlay Wallace
Streamline paddle steamer stroke winner Lucy Ackers
Fantastic ‘Tea Pot’ & backstroke arms winner Cameron King
Best ankle grabber (again you had to be there!!) Holly Slater.

Thank you to all our Otter swimmers who attended on the night, you all swam brilliantly and your coaches are proud to be able to coach you, the future for the Otters club looks very promising, as we have a fantastic bunch of promising young competitive swimmers currently training at the Otters.

Local radio station Real Radio runs a weekly Breakfast show Blag where one of the presenters Lorna, helps worthy causes Blag for free goodies. GH Otters were chosen for the Blag and Taurus Promotions from Bolton kindly agreed to provide our club 100 free poolside Tshirts.

Click here to listen.

The Co-Operative community fund have generously donated £1750 to Great Harwood Otter Swimming Club. This will help us make available our much loved training sessions to many children for the coming years. A Big Thank you to the Co-Operative from all of the Otters. For more information on the Community Fund click here.

Prestons Funeral Services of Great Harwood will be sponsoring our club Championships by paying for all of the trophies that are won by our talented swimmers on these occasions. They have pledged to donate £500 per year for the foreseeable future to pay for these much loved trophies. For more information about Prestons click here.

And the winners of the great harwood otter swimming club presentation night 2012 awards are…

F.J. Neale Endeavour Trophy

• Girl winner – Samantha Hepworth
• Boy winner – Dominik Allen

Coaches Award

• Girl Winner – Alice Roberts
• Girl Winner – Megan Davidson

Merit Awards

• Cubs – Isabel Bentley
• 1st Group – Sophie Donovan
• Top Group – Robert Dyer

Cubs Award

• Top Boy Cub – Stevie Hacking
• Top Girl Cub – Eve Wall

Otters took part in Swimathon and raised over £670 for charity

Great Harwood Otter Swimming Club are having a fantastic season, now back in the 1st Division NELF league, all our swimmers are swimming their hearts out, and enjoying the opportunity to perform at this higher level again, and this good form our swimmers are in continued, when Head Coach Craig Lord and Team Manager Tracey Beswick took our largest number of Otter swimmers ever, to The Aquabears Summer Swimming Meet at Broughton Pool In Salford on July 2/3rd. Twenty Otter Club Swimmers competed aged from 9yrs to 14yrs old, Coach Craig Lord said “all our swimmers competed over both days at a consistently high level, all those training hours at our club really paid off we competed in 113 swims gaining our swimmers 75 P/Bs, I dont like to single any one out as there were some very pleasing powerful swims achieved over this weekend, but special mention must go to Elliot Norman, Ellie Ward, Saffron Fenton, Lucy Alexander and Matthew Sharpe who produced some blisteringly fast swims.

We won 35 medals (11 golds, 13 silvers and 9 bronzes) The swimmers who competed and helped the club to our biggest ever Medal haul were Jarvis Davies, Lucy Alexander, Madison Beswick, Eleanour Bolton, Megan Davidson, Saffron Fenton, Aaron Guy, Scott Davidson, Kara Layne, Elliot Norman, AlIce Roberts, Flynn O’Rourke, Emily Sharpe, Georgina Smith, Matthew Sharpe, George Taylor, Harvey Taylor, Ben Turland, Ellie Ward and Holly Williams.