As a competitive swimming club all our members are encouraged to compete at the appropriate level.
The club try to give notice of gala dates as early as possible via the notice-boards, club newsletters or on the website.
The galas are run under ASA Laws and Technical rules. These rules can be found on the Swim England website
The exact rules for each Gala will be slightly different but the details will be available in the programme before the event.
Internal galas are not currently available due to our pool location. These will return once we are able to with the new Halifax Swimming Pool.
Usually every club member is placed into a group – either bronze, silver, gold or platinum – and the events are group specific.
The races for each group change every gala and you can take part in up to 3 of the ones applicable to you. These galas work on a ‘Points Score’ system whereby you gain points for improving on your previous times.
Your points are recorded at each gala and the 3 group members with the most points in each group at the end of the gala gain the medals.
These types of galas are organised and carried out by Swimming Clubs.
The Clubs invite other Swimming Clubs to come and take part. They could either be for a specific event such as a Christmas Meet, or held in honour of an exchange visit, or maybe just an annual tradition.
These galas are again are usually held in much the same way as K&D galas with medals and pennants for finalists, however ‘Speeding Tickets’ can also be awarded. Swimmers sometimes are put into either an A, B or C time boundary depending on their entered times. If the swimmer then goes on to break their graded time boundary, they get promoted to the higher boundary and gain a ‘Speeding Ticket’.
Kirklees and District Galas
These galas take place on Sunday afternoons at Huddersfield Leisure Centre with 5 galas for individual events and some teams. The last gala is for teams only, with the teams being selected by the Head Coach.
They are ideal for swimmers who are ready to start competitive swimming outside the club’s internal galas.
The events are swum in age group order and change from gala to gala. Some races may be heat declared winners, but more likely you will swim in a heat and hopefully progress through to a final!
Medals are given to the top three swimmers, and pennants to all finalists.
Yorkshires
These galas are a huge step up from the local ones. They are usually help at either Ponds Forge in Sheffield, or John Charles pool in Leeds and swum in a 50m pool (long course) although some are 25m (short course). LOTS more swimming clubs and squads take part in them, and electronic timers are used and your name comes up on a big screen for all to see!
You have to meet a time requirement in order to qualify, and the swimmers you will be up against will be faster. Before your race you will go to a call room, or a seated area. There are still heats and finals, although a lot more people enter these galas so qualifying for the finals is harder still.
The Yorkshires are held in a Summer and Winter series and there are multiple galas in each series. They go on all weekend in four sessions – Saturday morning and afternoon, and the same on Sunday. If you are in the morning session, prepare for an early start. Warm up starts at 8am!
North Eastern Regions
The North Eastern’s are very similar to the Yorkshires whereby they go on over whole weekends with four sessions, and they are also usually held at Ponds Forge, Leeds or Sunderland over 50m lengths.
Exactly the same set up as the Yorkshires, however, the qualifying times are again decreased making qualifying much harder.
As the qualifying times for galas decrease and become increasingly more difficult to obtain, fewer and fewer swimmers from clubs attend these galas, but we want as many people from Halifax there as possible.
Nationals are a very prestigious event in the swimming calendar and only the best of the best, and the fastest of the fast are able to make the extremely quick qualifying times- (Olympic swimmers attend and compete in the Nationals).
They are held at Ponds Forge pool in Sheffield.
Only a select few swimmers from Halifax have reached the National standard, although we do have swimmers that are fractions off the qualifying times that they need.
We hope to see more and more Halifax swimmers attend in the very near future!