MANTAS INVITATIONAL MEET 2016 – REPORT | |
4/27/2016 | |
The 40th Invitational meet held at Tung Chung on April 23-24th was a great success, despite initial problems securing the venue. The Mantas swimming club strives to continue Captain Harry Wright’s legacy of providing age group swimmers with international competition and in that regard the meet this year certainly achieved its aim! With LCSD pools increasingly difficult to book for competitions, we had to squeeze events this year into one and a half days, which meant only 100m and 50m events of each stroke. Nevertheless we had a great turn out from both our own and overseas swimmers with over 400 children taking part from age 7 to 18yrs. The overseas swimmers came from a total of 28 different teams in Asia, with teams from China and the Philippines dominating, but with our friends from the TAC Mudsharks (Japan) and a new team from Bangkok (RDFSL) joining as well. Many teams are old friends who have been attending for many years, but there are always new teams hearing about the meet and wanting to join the action! We appreciate the support of all the overseas teams travelling to Hong Kong to take part! The HKASA deserve a very big thankyou this year for helping to support the booking process, and providing us with the very efficient FINA officials – they did a great job as always and made sure the events on Sunday finished with only 5 minutes to spare! The staff at the Tung Chung pool were also as accommodating and helpful as they could be, with problems such as lack of lifeguards (which meant no warm down pool) out of their control. The Omega timing trio headed by Tony Ho have also become an invaluable part of the meet, looking after the electronic timing. The backup timing from the WGH school timekeepers was also essential and very well done this year. The competition would not be possible without the full support of not only Harry Wright Int, but also the parents of the Mantas swimmers, who all willingly gave up their time to help out at the meet. Those on the committee – great job on planning and preparation! Sue Tan our current president (who will step down in June) must be greatly thanked for all her work in the run up to the meet and working on Saturday, even without children swimming! Patrick and Jane Wilson once again worked all day Saturday, as they have for many years with our ex Olympian Hannah Wilson coming along to support and presenting the trophies at the Awards lunch. Others on the committee deserve very special mention and thanks; Ingrid Leven did a multitude of tasks being in charge of kit, and officials!! Amazing job Ingrid! Rachel Ridley once again a fantastic job organizing the Awards lunch, and our new treasurer Ava with her first taste of the difficult task of dealing with all the overseas fees, tickets etc! A last but most important special mention to June Wright who at 82 years old continues to do a huge amount of preparation to ensure the smooth running of the meet and was on hand throughout the competition – over 40 years of service to the sport of swimming in HK!! Lastly a thank you to all those parents who helped to fund the meet with Sponsor A Race, Banners and Advert sponsorship; your support is very much appreciated. Now to the swimmers! The kids hopefully all had a great time being part of the Hong Kong Mantas team and having the chance to swim multiple events during the competition. We fielded 56 swimmers and proved very strong in some of the age groups – this gave Mantas a top team score of 629 points! Well done to all the swimmers and coaches! Overseas Team Awards 1st = Shanghai International Swim Club with 36 swimmers (344.5 points) 2nd = ISB (International School Beijing) Dragons with 39 swimmers (321.5 points) 3rd = Valle Verde Aqua Lasers with 23 swimmers (246 points) Age Group Trophy Winners; The points from each event age group can be found on the mantas website with other results; www.mantasswimming.com Nathaniel Yeoh had a fantastic meet and was awarded with the champion trophy for the 11-12yr boys category. With 72 points achieved with 8 Gold medal positions, he was also the highest scoring swimmer of the whole meet! Adam Graham also swam very well to achieve 3rd place overall in the 9-10yr boys, with Temana Short achieving 3rd place in the 13-14yr age group, and Stefan Hess in 3rd place in the 15-19yr category. Well done Mantas boys! The Mantas girl trophies all came in the 15-19yr age group, with Kylie Woo the Champion with 60 points, Aneekah Styles the runner up with 49 points and Nicole Evans in 3rd place with 44 points. Erin Deayton and Malin Leven came close in the very competitve 11-12 yr girls coming in joint 4th place with 23 points each. Many others of the Mantas team battled it out for points, medals and ribbons, and achieved some great new and personal best times. Well done to all! New Records; A total of 11 records were broken this year including the 15/over record for 50m Backstroke by our own Kylie Woo who set a new time of 32.91. Perhaps the most exciting was the Boys Mantas medley relay team. Consisting of Adam Graham, Nathaniel Yeoh, Temana Short, and Stefan Hess, the team powered their way to beat the old record from 2007 with a time of 1.48.64. Mantas Memorial Awards; there are 3 awards given out after each Home meet, to the top scoring Mantas boy and girl of the meet, and a special award to the Mantas swimmer of the year, as chosen by the coaches; The Janet Rutherford Trophy; NATHANIEL YEOH The Sam & Judith Ng Trophy; KYLIE WOO The Harry Wright Trophy; ALISON MACALPIN All the trophies were presented at the Awards Lunch, Regal Airport Hotel. MC was very nicely done by Harry De Pree, and we were entertained by the super photos taken by Ker Wei and Amy Gan, and the amazing video from Jennifer Deayton. Hannah Wilson was there to present age group awards, and the event was a great finish to the weekend! LINK TO PHOTOS; Meet photos 2016 Next Mantas event = Mantas Splash In and Awards! Evening of Saturday June 11th – West Island School – mark the date in your diary now!! Don’t miss – details of sign up will be sent out soon. | |
Back |