UK’s Premier Competitive Swimming League, the National Arena Swim League (NASL) kicked off its 2019/2020 season with the first round of galas taking place at Cardiff International Pool.
The NASL is made up of 6 leagues across England and Wales, with 333 teams representing East Midlands, London, North West, South, Western and West Midlands.
Swimmers from as young as 10 years of age compete alongside elite international swimmers, such as World Champion James Guy, for team points at 3 regional rounds in October, November, and December respectively. The top 20 teams from these SCM competitions head to the National Finals in Cardiff in March.
The squad of Plymouth Leander won the A Cup final last year and will seek to defend its trophy against the likes of Millfield, Guildford City, Hatfield, Cardiff and more.
Results will be found here once they’ve been loaded.
Although the results from the respective galas are still filtering into the NASL site linked above, we can report that Guy’s former training home of Millfield took the Western League meet ahead of Mount Kelly, with the former amassing 257 points to the latter’s 250. Mount Kelly won the B-Final in last season’s national finals.
Plymouth Leander also took its first-round meet with 273 points ahead of Swansea Aquatics who settled for runner-up with 236 points.
In the South League, Guildford City, Wycombe District and Bromley Swim Club were all first-round meet winners, while Team Ipswich and Camden Swiss Cottage took the London League’s first-round titles.
Round 2 is coming up on Saturday, November 9th.
Interesting competition rules mean last year Millfield made A Final ahead of Mount Kelly, who went on to win B Final, despite MK finishing ahead of Millfield but behind Plymouth in the Regional Final. Only the 7 Regional winners go direct to final then all final swims for top so many teams in each region are fed into a Virtual Final and scored for points with the top 3 not yet qualified teams joining the regional winners in the A final.
Tried contacting meet organisers but had no luck, so I’ll try my luck here: Did anybody attend the County Team Champs in Sheffield (SC) last week? I missed them, but the results show 12 year old Eva Okaro leading off the 6x50fr in 25.55s, can anybody verify that? Fastest time ever by a Brit aged 12, 13 or 14 (and only .04 off the fastest by a 15yo) but won’t count as a record I believe.
She was 1:01.9 in the 100 fly, so doesn’t seem outside of the realm of reason. Results show her as being 13, though.
I think that’s as she’ll be 13 on December 31st, don’t think she has turned 13 yet. BS database now listing her results so I imagine they must have been verified.
That is crazy. Sjostrom went 25 to win the skins.
I think she was a rolling 26mid in the same relay last year.
Yep, she swam 27.2 LCM when she was 11 too. Very speedy fly & back too.
Phenomenal!