Swimming South Africa released the SA swimming rankings 2017 season this week with a little bit of a twist.

Monica’s SA Swimming rankings 2017:

In the table above, we list Monica’s Swimming South Africa database history.  Monica started swimming competitively during 2014-2015 as a registered Level 1 swimmer.

This year she swims in the Female 10 & Under age group category for a fourth consecutive year.

Levels swimming is not always moonshine and roses.  It takes guts, blood, sweat, and tears – and we are only at the beginning of this journey.

Our biggest break-through in 2016-2017:

In 2015-2016 our swimmer had a very bad experience during the KZN Provincial Championships.  Swimmers in our region compete provincially (KZN) in February every year, followed by SSA Regionals as the last meet of the season.

Monica’ chest closed during the 100-meter Butterfly.  Against all odds and instructions from our doctor, Monica decided to swim through it and finish the event.  However brave this attempt was, we paid the price.  Monica developed a fear to swim 100-butterfly after the asthmatic incident.

Time for a decision.  Our first priority is always Monica’s health.  We made a decision to hold off on the 100-butterfly event for the season and work on strength, confidence, and stroke correction in training.

As a result, Monica only entered the 50-Butterfly for the biggest part of 2016-2017 to allow time to grow stronger and work on the mental aspect and subsequent fear to swim butterfly.

This is most likely the best decision we ever made.

It is June 2017 and we have a fearless butterfly swimmer that is now comfortable to attempt 150-meters Fly building up to a 200-meter.

Moreover and most likely our biggest breakthrough is restoring the confidence to know that she can comfortably swim 100-meter butterfly without her chest closing.  (Slight medication adjustments and further testing have an asthma prevention plan in place and it is working.  It also helps that she is another year older.)

I  CAN DO THIS!

Short course and long course SA Swimming rankings 2017:

Short course meets are few and far between in our gala calendar.  There are two short course events on the 2017-2018 swim calendar:

• Seals 2 – 25 June 2017
• Seagulls Swimming Championship 5-8 October 2017

Age group swim meets and Club galas are normally long course meets held at Kings Park Swimming Pool in Durban.

Monica’s talents definitely indicate an ability to swim longer distances.  We are fully aware that this might change in future as she develops and moves into puberty.  Therefore, we make the most of it by entering her for 400-meter events as she truly enjoys swimming distance.

We admit that the short-course rankings are a bit of a surprise.  We swim so many long-course events that one tends to forget about the importance of short-course swimming.

Will Monica swim open water?

Not at this stage. For no other reason that she is not showing interest in open water swimming.  Monica enjoys the organization of pool swimming.  She is a creature of habit.  She is comfortable in her environment and even helps the younger swimmers at the assembly point during meets.

Mixing routines and testing her reaction does take place.  We do this to ensure that she grows up being able to handle different race conditions.  Our best experience where we learned the most by far was the 2016-2017 SSA Level 2 champs in Germiston.

Our hard work from 2016-2017 is already paying off as Monica is delivering personal bests during Pre-season racing.  We know it is only the beginning of the last long haul in 10 & Under swimming.  We look forward to this year’s results and to witness growth in our young swimmer.

How do I get my SA Swimming Rankings 2017?

Swimming South Africa normally publish national age group rankings once a year.  It does, however, happen at times that they do not publish updated rankings.

I will explain how to get your SA Swimming rankings 2017 in this article as the printed rankings do not seem to be available.  It looks as if users have to pull the data this year from the SSA database.

Important:  The link provided takes visitors to a database.  It appears that the database is not responsive so we find that iPads and iPhones do not display the links to take users to the individual rankings.  Please use a desktop to visit the site.

1. Copy and paste this URL into your browser and visit the site or copy and paste this into your browser: http://www.sports-tek.com/TMOnline/index.asp?STRIPPED=SwimmingSouthAfricaOfficeCopy.  
2. Click on the drop-down and scroll down until you find Swimming South Africa, then click on the link.  Wait until the page refresh.
   
3.  Select Swimming South Africa Office Copy again on the drop down.
4. Click on the third button from the left, RANK.  This button does not show when you use an iPhone or iPad.  It might vary depending on the make and model of your handset.
5. On the left select LCM (long course) or SCM (short course), the preferred ages and female or male.  Simply click next on the distance to get the results. The results display as Splits, Position, Athlete name etc.
6. If you need the total number of athletes or swimmer, do the following.  Look at the top right-hand side of the screen.  There is a drop-down stating “Go to page”.  Click on the drop-down and select the last page.  It will show the total number of pages.  Click on the bottom page number to get the total number of swimmers.
7. Please share this article if you find it helpful!