A Shirley schoolboy has become one of the youngest swimmers ever to complete the ASA Honours Challenge. Oliver Cook (8) completed a mixture of swimming challenges to achieve the ASA Honours award.
The award consists of different swimming skills to test the prowess of the swimmer, starting with a straddle jump entry, five metre swim, executing a pike surface dive to the bottom of the pool collect a brick, swim 20 meters with the weight, followed by head first sculling into a backward somersault and then a front somersault into feet first sculling. Enough to make you dizzy.
The final challenges are on a time limit to add speed into the equation, making them much more difficult with only 20minutes to complete the tasks: 200 meters frontcrawl, 200 meters backcrawl, 50 metres butterfly with 500m freestyle to include two head first surface dives and two feet first surface dives travelling four meters underwater through two hoops at the bottom of the deep (2m) section.
Not only was Oliver able to complete these two huge sets of tasks but he did it all whilst navigating himself round further obstacles, in the way of other swimmers performing their distance swimming badges. It was the final day of the Easter Crash Course 2013 and the lanes were packed.
Coach Chris White ” He did really well considering how busy it was. Oliver had to swim around a lot of others to make the time and its a tough test as it is”
Oliver still completed the task showing great speed, persistence and stamina in the pool becoming one of the youngest swimmers ever to complete the Honours Challenge. Well done Ollie!