Yabbies clean up at Western Districts

The Cobar Yabbies team cleaned up at the Western Districts Swimming Carnival at Nyngan on Sunday

The Cobar Yabbies Senior Men’s Swim-ming Club cleaned up at the Western Dis-tricts Swimming Carnival at Nyngan on Sunday.
In addition to winning three relays, three handicap events, and two Scratch events, Yab-bies also recorded four second places.
The Cobar team of 13 performed well in the field of 60 swimmers from Nyngan, Forbes, Dubbo, Wellington and Condobolin.
Yabbies finished first and second in the 50m Freestyle Scratch event with Matt Harland out-sprinting his father Murray by half a second to claim the win.
The Harlands also joined the Toomeys, Ja-son and Scott, to easily win the 4x50m Scratch relay with a combined time of 2 min 14 sec.
The Yabbies 10 Man Relay team (with Scott Toomey and the Harlands along with Greg Dimond, Bill Fugar, Bob Clark, John Claus, Paul Swainston, Chris Powell and Dave Mex-ted) won the 10 Man Relay after finishing within just 0.44 seconds of their combined nominated time.
Yabbies president John Carswell won the 50m freestyle handicap final with Scott Toomey placing second in the 100m final.
Bob Clark and Matt Harland also made the 100m final and Jason Toomey was a finalist in the 30m handicapped event.
Dave Mexted won both of his RSL 30m handicap and 50m Scratch events.
The Yabbies team of Clark, Swainston, Fu-gar and Powell finished second in the 200+ years relay and another second place was rec-orded by the Yabbies in the 6x50m RSL Handicap relay (Mexted, Claus, Carswell, Dimond, Jason Toomey and Powell).
The Yabbies are back on the road this week-end heading to Nelson Bay for the Four Ways Carnival which was postponed from the end of last year.
Their final carnival of the season, the AIF Nationals championships, will be contested in Coffs Harbour next month.
At the Cobar club’s regular competition swim last Tuesday night, the magic time of 0.03 seconds has again proved to be a winner with four swimmers winning events with 0.03 seconds off their nominated times.
John Claus and Matt Harland tied for first place in the 30m handicapped freestyle swim after finishing within 0.03 seconds of their nominated times in separate heats.
Visitor Steve Howell won the 50m event with 0.03 seconds off his time and then backed up to win the 100m swim, again with 0.03 seconds off his nominated time.
Claus and Harland teamed up to win the Brace Relay novelty event with 0.37 seconds off their nominated time.
They were way ahead of the rest of the field with second placed Paul Swainston and Bill Fugar more than two and a half seconds be-hind.