PAYSC HOSTS 20TH JUNIOR INTERCLUB COMPETITION

 

Rotated annually among the clubs, this year’s competition landed with PAYSC. Taking up the challenge, our club’s parent-volunteers pitched in and pulled off the perfect meet

 

By Aloysius Khoo

Pictures by Soh Kheng Peng

 

Hosting the meet took meticulous planning. You could almost say even the weather was carefully choreographed. At 2 pm on the dot, the skies opened for all of two minutes to shower its blessings and declare the 20th Junior Interclub Competition 2004 open. All through the afternoon, the skies cooperated obligingly and spared us from blistering sun and torrential downpour.

 

Text Box: So you think being a stroke judge is easy. 68 events, 127 races over, 50m and 200m distances. By the time the last lap is swum for the day, your 4 stroke judges, 2 on each side of the pool, without rest or relieve, would have each paced the length of the pool 354 times, or a total of 17.7 km. It is exhausting work. Now you know why you got DQ’ed. Text Box: A minor army of volunteers helped make this competition happen. 112 parents and older club mates assisting 430 swimmers. At a ratio of 3.83 swimmers per assistant, you have it better than flying business class. Anticipating a long afternoon, the experience of the PAYSC organizers showed. No formalities, no march past parade, forget the Chairman’s speech, no announcing of swimmers line up, heck, we’re not even going to call for event reporting. From the word go, events lined up and were executed in quick fashion with no unnecessary delays.

 

PAYSC parents with their older swimmers were mobilized and tasked with the smooth running of the competition. They helmed the control room, operated the computer and electronic scoreboard, served as announcers, manned the reporting station, served as house doctor, photographer, and took care of refreshments.  Expertise with refereeing and starting came from SSA. Volunteers from a mix of clubs provided the judging and timekeeping. Thanks to all for the effort, the events rolled off one after another without a hitch.

 

Competition is serious business taking place in an atmosphere of carnival festivity and friendly rivalry, backed by favorite dance mixes selected by our teenage swimmers. The stands was filled with expectant parents and supporters armed with videos and cameras, food and drinks, caps, mats, newspapers and sunglasses, all seated orderly according to their club’s allotted column. Readily available was the staple of every competition, the ubiquitous bunch of bananas. The competitors all knew what to do. Even the young first timers were steady and knew where to go. There were the high points of wins and of records falling, of good swims and personal bests matched by a fair share of casualties of false starts and DQs.

 

Just when stomachs start to growl and it looked like the backstroke event is going to carry on past the 5:30pm dinner break, the skies uncannily sent a timely reminder by opening up in full force to call a time-out from the competition. The rain poured while swimmers took their dinner, only to let up completely when the dinner hour is up. Talk about timing, this could not have been better executed even if we had planned for it, if we could.

 

The excitement of competition moved up several notches with the start of the relays events. Flags appeared and teams shouted themselves hoarse cheering their teammates on. By 9pm when the last race was swum and the tally totaled, the winner emerged with ACE claiming the trophy for this very exciting and successful 20th JIC.

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