Oh what a night! Our swimmers, families and friends celebrated a season of success at our 2024/2025 Presentation Night. Thank you to Club Merrylands for hosting the evening and sponsoring our room.
Club President Graham Edwards opened the proceedings, reflecting on our wonderful season and thanked our committee, our volunteers and coaches for all their work in the past year.
Our Graded Pointscore was awarded, and it was great to see the improvements our swimmers had made over the season being converted into some very large pointscores! Congratulations to Tomas Dlesk for taking out the overall highest pointscore, well exceeding 300 points and also winning the Junior Boys Pointscore. William Johnston was Junior Boys Runner-Up and second highest overall. Gabriella Assi took out the Junior Girls Pointscore for the second year in a row, and Grace Brancatisano was Junior Girls Runner-Up. Varant Jambazian and Leanne Tovkach took up top honours in the Senior Pointscores, with Simon Johnston and Tricia Johnston in 2nd placings.
The hotly contested Senior Handicap was presented, and congratulations to Varant Jambazian for playing a strong game throughout the season to win this award.
Coaching Awards were awarded to squad swimmers who display an excellent attitude to training, push themselves to continually improve and attend with a positive attitude. Congratulations to Xavier Ou, Coralie Havea and Leanne Tovkach on their well-deserved beanies.
Denise Assi paused proceedings to take a moment to thank Peter Johnston for his service to the club over the last 20 years as Head Coach. A sentimental video was shown reflecting on Peter's influence on some of our swimmers, not only in regards to results in the pool, but also helping our athletes grow as people.
Masters Excellence Awards were presented to our Masters Swimmers with their best performance during the season compared to the Masters World Record in that event for their age group. The closer they are to their world record, the higher the level of award they receive: Platinum, Gold, Silver or Bronze. The Platinum Award went to Alison Johnston, Gold Awards to Kylee Murray and Ian Wilson and Bronze Awards to Varant Jambazian and Leanne Tovkach.
The Age and Open Championship Awards went to swimmers who competed against their own age group and congratulations to all who received a top 3 placing. There were some very close finishes in some of the age groups with exciting racing throughout the season.
Sylvia Chan arranged some fun pool-themed trivia and our swimmers and families proved to be just as competitive outside of the pool!
The Jack Smart Encouragement Award is in memory of Life Member, Jack Smart and is presented to swimmers for their progression in their distances swum. Gabriel and Zena Mansour were joint winners of this award for their progression from 25 to 50 metre events throughout the season.
The Jim Pye "Minties" Development Award is in memory of Life Member Jim Pye. This award is presented to a Junior Swimmer who has swum consistently over the season, steadily improving and representing the club at various swimming meets. Gabriella Assi was the recipient of this award.
Representative Awards and club shirts were presented to Joseph Assi and Leo Zhu for their representation of the club at Swimming NSW Events.
The Lions Award was presented to Prafulla Shrestha for his services to the club over the past season. Prafulla jumps in to assist in numerous roles, including setting up and packing up every Saturday, timekeeping, barbequing, volunteering at external meets and being the club "Chair Man".
The Masters Swimmer of the Year was awarded to Alison Johnston for her performances at the 2025 National Championships and having the highest points in respect to the World Record for her age group.
The Champion of Champions Award is based on performance in Graded Races, Championships, and representative swims for the club. Joseph Assi won this award, gaining many of his points for his dominance in the Club's Open Championships and his attendance at Area and Metropolitan Championships. Congratulations to Tomas in 2nd place and Alison in 3rd.
Our evening was concluded with speeches from our Club Captains, Lisa Shrestha and Joseph Assi, and a wonderful video montage of the season was displayed.
Thank you to Margaret Edwards and Tricia Johnston for organising the trophies, Denise Assi for being the official photographer for the evening, Sylvia Chan for the trivia and both Sylvia and Denise for the video productions.