Worthing Swimming Club Water Polo sponsored swim success

AT the start of the year Worthing Swimming Club made the decision to take the Worthing senior water polo team into the British national league for the first time in the club's 119 year history.
By The Newsroom
Published 23rd Jul 2009, 17:02 BST
Updated 8th Jun 2018, 04:31 BST

This is an exciting development for the club and is a logical progression for a team that has dominated Sussex water polo for the past few years as well as recently winning the South-east regional Championship.

Entering the league means a huge financial commitment and because of this the club decided to embark on a number of innovative fund-raising initiatives to help towards the costs.

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As a result, it held a recent sponsored swim at the Aquarena to raise funds jointly for Cancer research and our national league fund.

This was not the average sponsored event and six team members undertook the enormous task of swimming the 22 miles that replicates swimming the channel.

To put that in perspective, all six of the squad completed the 1078 lengths of the Aquarena that makes up the total distance.

After a few hours everyone was beginning to realise the size of the task and all the swimmers were beginning to suffer from various aches and pains but it was obvious that everyone was determined to reach the target even though it was taking a huge amount of effort.

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Eventually after 11 hours and 45 minutes Nathan Hart was the first finisher and one by one, Paul Phillpott, Richard Hooper, Alastair Hardinge and then Sam Abbott reached the magic 1078 total.

Finally, and at 10.30 in the evening, Ben Alcorn swam the final length to huge cheers from the large crowd that had gathered to see the end of this monumental event.

We are not sure yet what final amount has been raised because people continued to offer donations throughout the day but we would hope that a considerable donation will be made to cancer research as a result of the efforts.

A huge vote of thanks should be given to all six of the swimmers and also to the group of helpers who worked hard to make the event happen. We would also like to thank the Worthing Aquarena management and staff that helped us and their co-operation was hugely appreciated.

Alastair Roberts.

Worthing Swimming Club

Water Polo Secretary

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Related topics:WorthingSussex