Golden girl takes Harlequins to summit with great turn of speed
HARLEQUINS Aquatics were the toast of Buffalo City Aquatics (BCA) again when they retained their BCA Championship title earlier this month.
They made it two championships in a row after competing in the BCA Championship gala at the Joan Harrison Pool from December 2-4.
Harlequins won both the girls’ and boys’ sections this year, an improvement on last year where they won the overall title after their boys finished third and girls first.
They finished on 7 624 points, while Ultimate Swim Club (USC) on 5 812.5 finished runnersup for the second year running and Aquanova took third on 5 252.5 points.
“We had 95% of our swimmers swimming and everyone put in their best possible effort,” Harlequins coach Vionne Skinner said.
In all an impressive haul of 172 medals, which included 46 gold, 57 silver and 69 bronze were won by their swimmers in individual events while on the relay side, 27 medals featuring seven gold, eight silver and 12 bronze were claimed, making it 199 medals in total.
The top performing swimmer was once again the ever-impressive Catherine Eland, who won every event she entered for a personal haul of eight gold medals.
Eland is the current holder of 19 provincial records, two EP all-comers records and is the holder of the U10 50m butterfly SA record.
Eland was also nominated by the province for the Eastern Cape Sports and Recreation Awards as the 2015 female swimmer of the year.
Other swimmers excelled as well qualifying for level two and three galas, while Eland along with Meralda Terblanche, Christian Muller and Tumaini MacDonell, qualified for the SA Junior Nationals in March next year.
Terblanche and Oelofse also qualified for the SA youth nationals, while Terblanche and Amy Swart qualified for the Senior National Open Water 3km swim.
“It's wonderful, to reach this level, it means our swimmers are coming into their own and we are also excited about Meralda and Amy, who are our first two to qualify for what is a new branch of swimming which is the open water swim,” said Skinner.
Harlequins will now look to take the momentum gained over an impressive year into 2017, where they will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the club.
The coaching staff led by Skinner, who was nominated by the province as Coach of the Year at the Eastern Cape Sports and Recreation awards last year and her son Cajun and daughter, Tazlin, will be aiming to inspire another memorable year for the club.
“The whole focus of Harlequins is building children, it’s great that we won, but really what we are doing is growing children in confidence and respect in every facet, so looking forward we want to continue with that,” said Skinner.