Come to Hornsby Pool on Friday nights from early October to early April, swim with your friends and have a sausage sizzle. Our club nights are open to all swimmers who can swim 25+ metres. At the club nights we run races in all strokes and distances and all ages are welcome – currently we have swimmers from 5 to 65 regularly attending.
Before the Club Night
See our Events page for details of which events are planned for each club night.
How to enter: Members – entry is through the Swim Central portal, see the separate menu item for details. If you’re not a member, you’re welcome to come along for 2 free trials before joining the club. Trial swimmers – please email the swimmer’s full name, date of birth and which races they wish to enter to HornsbyRaceSec@gmail.com by 10pm on the Thursday before each race night.
When to enter: Members & trial swimmers – enter by 10pm on the Thursday before each race night. No late entries can be accommodated.
Seeding: Once entries close at 10pm on the Thursday before each club night, all swimmers are seeded based on their times. If you haven’t attended a club night previously, or if you don’t have an official time (in Swim Central), you will be seeded in the slowest heat. If you do have previous times in Swim Central, they will be used to seed you against swimmers with similar times.
Club night program: A program will be produced and added to the News section on this website sometime on Friday. You will be able to see your name listed in the events that you entered, and you can see which heat and lane you will be swimming in.
On the Night
Start Time: Racing starts at 7pm sharp so please arrive by 6:45pm. We finish by 8:30pm.
Help needed: Please remember that Hornsby Swimming Club is run by volunteers and we need 8 parents to step up and time-keep every night, or we will not be able to record times for the swimmers. Timekeeping is easy, we have a system where the timers start automatically and you will just need to press a button when the swimmer touches the wall, to record their time.
Marshalling: Before each event starts, swimmers are marshalled behind the diving blocks. Listen out for the Marshall calling out your name and lane. You don’t need to dive from the blocks if you’re not comfortable doing so, you can dive from the pool edge or start in the water – just let the Marshall know.
Coach: Finally, our head coach attends most club nights and is there to give swimmers advice and encouragement where needed.
Official / Unofficial Times
We don’t currently have a referee in our club* so most of our club nights are unofficial times however several time a year we arrange for a visiting referee to help us out and we have official times which can then be used to enter other meets.
* Consider becoming a technical official, it’s rewarding and an excellent way to contribute to the sport, spend time with your children, create great friendships and gain professional development. See here for further information.
Club Awards
Two types of awards are presented every year at our AGM in May: Pointscore Champion and Club Champion.
These are awarded to male and female swimmers in the age categories:
- 6 & Under
- 7 & 8
- 9 & 10
- 11 & 12
- 13 & 14
- 15 & 16
- 17 & Over
For both awards, if you can swim 25m in under 30 seconds, you should swim the 50m event instead. You will not earn any points for the 25m race if you have swum it previously in under 30 seconds.
Pointscore Champion
Points are awarded for every swim at every club night except for our Championship Nights. These points are accumulated across the season and awarded to the highest score in each age category.
We keep track of your personal best times swum at club nights separately to those times swum at other competitions, and we use your ‘club personal best’ (cPB) to allocate points to you.
Note: In order to receive a Pointscore Champion award, you need to swim in more than 50% of our race nights.
Points:
- Maximum points earned the first time you swim a stroke/distance this season or if you set a new cPB for this stroke/distance.
- You equal your cPB for this stroke/distance.
- You finish within 0.1 seconds of your cPB.
- You finish within 1 second of your cPB.
- As long as you come and swim, you’ll earn one point per stroke/distance, even if you don’t get a cPB.
Club Champion
We run our Club Championship over 3 nights in February / March.
All strokes and all distances will be covered across these 3 nights.
The top 8 male and female swimmers in each event, in each age category will be awarded points: from 8 points for first place down to 1 point for 8th place.
Points will be accumulated across the championship events on those nights and the highest score in each age category will be Club Champion for that age.
Note: In order to receive a Club Champion award, you need to swim in 50% or more of our Championship nights.