I have just spent the weekend at the 2018 Counties Age Group Championships. The meet is held each year at the Papatoetoe long course out-door pool. Without question this meet and the Hawkes Bay Poverty Bay Championships in the Gisborne Olympic pool are my favourite swim meets.

In many respects they are very similar. Dozens of tents and scores of $12 Warehouse canvas picnic chairs cover the grass around the pool. While they wait to race young swimmers arm wrestle. Some practice cart wheels and others dare one another to stand on an iron man-hole cover made boiling hot by the sun. You’d struggle to call some swim meets fun. But the Counties Age Group Championship certainly merits that title.

They do all the old fashioned stuff so very well. It gives the occasion a sense of nostalgia; of warmth; of good times. They play the national anthem before the meet begins. They have a team march past with prizes for the best fancy dress. They hand out best-time ribbons and post over a 1000 photographs of the event on the internet. One lady said to me as we were leaving on Sunday night, “If you say anything about us on Swimwatch, make sure it’s nice.” She need have no concern. Her meet is nothing but good.

And I don’t mean that in a condescending way. All the important stuff is done well. The psych-sheets are posted well before the event. The meet runs on time. The results are electronic and are posted within minutes of end of the race. Medals are instantly available for event winners. And if, like me, you forget to clear your club’s post box the meet organizer reminds you there are medals to be collected.

Talking about organizers; obviously a meet like this requires 101 officials. The Counties meet always seems to have plenty of volunteers. However Jeannie and Geoff Sibun merit special mention. They have been organizing this meet for longer than I can remember. Their warm, relaxed efficiency is reflected perfectly in the sincerity of their swim meet.

You may remember a Swimwatch post, a couple of weeks ago, mentioned the incredible figure of eighty-two disqualifications made at the Anthony Mosse swim meet. Well the Counties meet is also a three day event involving much the same age groups. And yet at Counties there were 22 (27%) fewer disqualifications. I don’t believe for a minute that means the judges at Counties were slack and let swimmers break the rules. I also don’t believe swimmers in Auckland are 27% worse than swimmers in Counties. Many of them are the same swimmers. I just think Counties has found a better balance between efficiency and fairness.

The swimmer I help, Eyad Masoud, had a good meet. He entered six events – the open men’s 50, 100 and 200 freestyle, the 50 and 100 butterfly and the 50 breaststroke. He won them all. That does not mean the competition was poor. The standard of the clubs that were there was too good for that to be true. One look at the names of past winners confirms the quality of the Counties meet; Paige Schendelaar-Kemp, Corey Main, Verity Hicks, Orinoco Faamausili Banse, Gabrielle Fa’amausili and Jane Ip. I was especially pleased with Eyad’s breaststroke. Even Eyad will admit, he is not the best breaststroker in the world. His best 50 prior to this meet was a very average 34.45 seconds. On Sunday he won the race and improved his personal best to 32.71. I think he still needs to stick to freestyle and butterfly. However it’s fun when an “off-event” goes well.

Eyad loved the meet. Coming from Syria and Saudi Arabia he has never seen sport played in the relaxed, fun way that Counties do so well. He has never had small boys pinch his arms and ask if he did a lot of weights to get muscles that big. He has also never swum in the rain. And he got to do that during a thundery heat shower on Saturday afternoon.

So, thank you Counties for a terrific weekend. We enjoy your meet a lot. If you don’t mind, we’d love to come back next year.