Community Stories November 2010

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Pre-school fun!!!

The start of the sports festival was a great success, 7 different nurserys around Oban came together on Thursday for fun and games. Three nurserys at a time rotated gymnastics, mini kickers, games and parachute fun.

Over 200 excited pre-schoolers joined in the fun and to put an even bigger smile on their faces they had an extra special visitor, Atlantis's Alf, and to the kids delight he even had a go on the trampoline.

What a fantastic day !!!

OBAN OTTERS SUCCESS!!

Oban Otters continues to thrive year-on-year with almost 200 swimmers through the doors every week on the Learn to Swim programme. Some of these young swimmershave now progressed through the ranks to the competitive side of the club and from this autum the club runs three squads, with a senior squad, junior sqaud and junior development squad.Thanks to the help of Atlantis Leisure and staff the senior and junior squads have been able to increase their training hours, which has been much needed given that the competition throughout the country at their level are probably training on average at least twice to three times as much.

Competitive swimming in Scotland is on a high and it is probably the highest participation sport in the country. Scottish swimming has seen a very steep upward curve over the last 10 years, which Scotland had significant success. The standard of age group swimming in the country is phenomenal. It is all the more remarkable then that squad members have done so well at both district and national level over the past couple of years with Mathew and Abigail, both 14, have recently moved to boarding schools in order to further their development. Abigail, having moved to Perthshire, now trains with Dundee City Aquatics and has primarily had successes as a free-style sprinter over the past year.

Mathew has for a number of years, been recognised as a very talented swimmer across all the strokes and at all distances, with particular strengths at 200 metres and above. Mathew is now in school in Edinburgh and trains with the Warrender Swimming Club, Scotlands No.1 Club. He is the youngest of 21 members of their senior performance squad, one of whom represented Scotland in Delhi. Mathew has produced some phenomenal times in the pool over the last 6 or 7 months, especially at 400 individual medley and 800 and 1500 freestyle. He is now ranked in the top 6 in the country over all 3 events, a remarkable achievement given the amount of training hours he has previously had in Oban. Strength in depth over all the swimming disciplines has seen Mathew have another 12 rankings in the top 10 in his age group in the country. His particular strength at distance culminated in the summer with him winning the Scottish 13 to 14 age group 2 kilometre open water title at Lochore in Fife.

Looking to the future, the senior squad now has some new young blood coming through and good things are hoped for 2011. However, one to look forward to may be late developer Patrick Mackinnon, 15, who is beginning to show his potential.

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