2019 results round up

This blog needs to start with an apology as we have had such a busy year I have not blogged each Wash Warriors outing as I would have wished. I started the year well but fell by the wayside early on so this is a results round up for the year 2019.

This year saw the team race all over the UK, travelling twice to the south (Brighton and All4One's comps near Brighton) to Scotland and the Flying Scots comp at Errol as well as Dolphins comp at Anglesey and everywhere in between!! We competed 2 days at the 2nd UKFL Championships putting in 5 teams this year (2 league and 3 multibreed) and ran 3 of our own competitions (2 at Elm, Wisbech and one at Banbury).

A number of our teams ran this year, mostly syncing with guest dogs but occasionally as a full league team.

Wash Warriors competed 8 times bringing home 4x1sts, 1x2nd, 2x3rd and 1x 6th place. At the end of the year their league seed time was registered at 19.10 seconds although as a sync team at Drax they did register 18.93 seconds (sub 19 for the 1st time).

Roman Warriors ( a pure snc team) competed 11 times during the year bringing home 5x1sts, 3x2nds, 2x3rds and 1x4th place. Their fastest time during the year was 19.04 seconds.

Viking Warriors ran 5 times with 3x2nds, 1x3rd and 1x4th place and ran as both league and sync. They have registered a 22.04 seed time to be carried forward to 2020.

Zulu Warriors ran 5 times too bringing in 2x1sts, 2x2nds and 1x3rd and registered a 19.91 seed time when running full league.

Aztec Warriors ran 2 times each time bringing home 2nd place rosettes and a seed time of 19.44 seconds.

Ninja Warriors ran once at Deeside at the end of the year bringing home a 1st place rosette resistering a time of 19.18 seconds.

Our Multibreed teams ran at the Champs, Drax and Wash Warriors bank holiday weekends. Indian Warriors ran 3 times, Highland, Norse and Rapid Wash Warrior teams 1 time each. They accumulated 2x1st places, 3x2nd places and one 4th. The Indians registered a fastest time of 20.07 seconds, Highland 21.86, Norse 20.72 and Rapid Wash 20.37.

So the overall haul for the year came to 14x1sts, 14x2nds, 6x3rds, 3x4ths 1x5th and 1x6th. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!!!!!

The following dogs gained awards during 2019 racing season.

Cadet awards were gained by Zarah in June, Skye and Shadow in September.

Cadet Advanced awards were gained by Amber in August, Zarah in September and Shadow in November.

Cadet Superior awards were gained by Millie in April, closely followed by Charly in May and then Jack in August.

2019 also saw the club grow massively. Forming in 2018 we had 3 members (namely us Hatchers and our dogs, 3 of which ran in open racing, with Bella retired and Zarah in training). During 2019 we gained a 'Northern Branch' when Lisa Iddon, Lisa Briscoe, Tom Greenwood, Sam Leadbetter and his granddaughter Jess joined us. They train themselves (although we did manage to have 1 joint training session near Sheffield during the year) and have grown already with 3 further members joining them to train their 5 new dogs. Down south we also grew the club with 5 new members over and above the 8 that joined us last year. Unfortunately we lost some of these, notably Sue Cahill and Sheena who returned to Rocksteady during the year. However, we now have regular training members numbering 19 and a total of 27 dogs in training with more to come (an amazing feat in itself). Sometimes is it a logistical nightmare but as long as we keep a laid back attitude it works - as shown by the amazing results above.

Huge thanks go to our club members for supporting Tina, Chris and myself during the year, especially with organising our own tournaments. There are special people we need to thank in the club but I would not want to leave anyone out so you know who you are!!! You all work so hard and we couldn't do this without you!!

Thanks also go to any syncing handler who ran their dogs with us during the year (some regularly and some occasionally) we enjoyed having you all and couldn't have run those teams without you, we hope you all enjoyed racing with us too.

Thanks also to the other teams who supported our tournaments and their various members who turned up early to help us set up the events, all of which were a success.

We now look forward to 2020 and hope to have some new dogs coming through into open racing from little league as well as boosting our little league dog numbers. We look to have another busy year planned with 4 events to host. One at Easter (April) over the bank holiday weekend at the Leicestershire Showground where we will be running an indoor and outdoor tournament all under cover in case of bad weather (a first for us and them). The other 3 tournaments will all be outdoor events, the first on the end bank holiday weekend in May at our training venue in Elm, Wisbech. Our June tournament is to be 'up north' for our northern branch at Leyland, nr Preston and finally July at Halefield stud near Peterborough. Lets hope for good weather and loads of support!!

Julia