Wiltshire Leagues

Wiltshire ASA arrange two league competitions; Summer and Winter League. Melksham Swordfiah are very pleased to take part in these leagues each year as they offer an opportunity for the swimmers to swim as a team, rather than as individuals.
These events are fun, fiercely contested between the clubs and have a great atmosphere.

The clubs involved are:
Bradford on Avon, Calne Alpha, Chippenham, Corsham, Devizes, Durrington, Marlborough, Malmesbury, Melksham, Royal Wootton Bassett, Salisbury, Swindon, Swindon Dolphins, Tigersharks, Trowbridge, Warminster and Wroughton.

Summer League

Wiltshire ASA Summer League is made up of 6 divisions. Each division consists of 4 clubs. The clubs swim against the other teams in the league over 4 rounds with each club hosting a round at their home pool. Winners of the division are promoted to the league above and the 4th placed team are relegated. There are 50 events across the following four age groups. The top 3 divisions swim events of 50m for the two lower age groups and 100m for the older age groups. The lower divisions swim events over 25m and 50m.

The events include individual events and relays:

Event	U12	U14	U16	Open
Freestyle	50/25	50/25	100/50	100/50
Backstroke	50/25	50/25	100/50	100/50
Butterfly	50/25	50/25	100/50	100/50
Breaststroke	50/25	50/25	100/50	100/50
4 x 1L IM	n/a	n/a	n/a	◊
4 x 1L Medley Relay	◊	◊	◊	◊
4 x 1L Freestyle Relay	◊	◊	◊	◊

Winter League

Winter League is a unique format where every club in the league is swimming against every other club in the league. Ideally a pool with enough lanes for each competing club would be used but there are not many of these around so we compete in separate pools and each event time is collated to calculate the points.

There are 24 teams so the fastest team in each event gets 24 points and so on down to one point for the slowest. No points are allocated for a disqualification or if a team does not compete.

The league is swam as two divisions (The top 12 teams at the end of the Winter League will compete as Division 1 in the following year’s competition and the remainder as Division 2.), but points are awarded as if there is one division, the divisions are formed so that clubs of comparable strength can compete together.

Each round is a competition of 39 relay events, each event being scored on position. A winning team is usually announced at each gala but these points do not count towards the overall ranking and are just an extra bit of fun on the night.

After three rounds the league positions will dictate which teams compete in the top final for the Winter League Trophy and which teams compete in the other finals.

At this time the top ranked Division 2 team are the Division 2 Champions.

All previous points are discarded in the finals and each gala is run as a separate event on a straight head to head so timekeepers are not required.

The competition format on this scale is probably unique in swimming, on each of the qualifying rounds it collates 936 times with the help of 8 referees, 4 starters, 24 judges, 8 chief timekeepers, 46 timekeepers, countless other helpers and of course the swimmers – about 700 of them.
The winter league has been in existence for over 35 years but only changed to its current scoring method in 1995.