[Lifesaving] Loughborough Competition 2012

So back on Saturday 12th May I competed at the Loughborough University lifesaving competition, the final competition of the BULSCA calendar. It took place in the afternoon after a typically long-winded AGM, about which I've already written. It was a strange day actually. The previous competition had been the Student Championships back in mid-March, so it was long time since I'd competed. This is a perennial problem with Loughborough competition though, so I'm used to it after 7 years of competitions!

We'd had some difficulty getting a team together as well. It was the first weekend of exams back in St Andrews (our undergraduate exams are much earlier than the English universities are), so many of our usual competitors either had exams on the day, on the following Monday, or are finalists and couldn't really spare the time. We'd got 3 of us (myself, Ella and Teddy) together, plus a body in Hannah A-K, but we managed to persuade her to join the team after some SERC practise in training. We didn't think that Hannah would be eligible for points as she's no longer a student, so we were resigned to losing 4th place in the league despite our reasonably comfortable cushion over London A. However on Friday evening we double-checked the rules and her graduation date, and discovered that she actually counted. Which meant we had a great shot at keeping 4th in the league.

We were 3rd last in the SERC draw, so we had a long time to wait in isolation. It wasn't quite as long as we'd anticipated though, as the competition ran ahead of time for the entire afternoon. I honestly can't remember the last time that that happened in a lifesaving event!

The dry SERC was set at a music festival, with our team just arriving at the 'minor injuries' first aid tent to begin our shift. We were confronted with someone having an epileptic seizure,their panicking friend, an unconscious, non-breathing casualty covered in vomit, a drunkard, an asthmatic, and a bleeding head wound. I sent Hannah to the unconscious body, Teddy to the drunkard (who appeared to be unconscious at first), and Ella to the epileptic. I dealt with the asthmatic, finding her inhaler in her bag in the corner. Teddy proceeded to deal with the head wound, before three more casualties rushed in half way through. One was clearly suffering from heat stroke, so I gave her a glass of water from the handy table and sat her down. One had a very large piece of glass in her arm, and her companion was incredibly insistent that the glass should be pulled out. I persuaded her that it should be kept in, and got them sat down as well. It all went fairly well from a treatment point of view, but sadly Ella didn't find the radio in the pocket of the epileptic casualty until right at the end of the incident. I was very happy with how it went though.

The wet SERC was supposed to be at Loughborough pool, with the GB diving team and an Italian swimming squad training. The incident commenced with one of the Italians rushing to get us whilst gabbling in Italian (which we obviously couldn't understand)! On entering the pool we saw a twisted ankle around the side of the pool, two unconscious casualties on the surface, and two weak swimmers. There were also two construction workers at the far end, who I noticed, but they were behind hazard tape. Even though the tape was a different colour to the out of bounds tape I automatically considered that end out of bounds, so left them until later in the incident - whoops! I also noticed an unconscious body on the bottom of the pool, although it turned out that there were actually two of them. We got the weak swimmers out of the water, along with one of the breathing unconscious casualties from the surface, and had the other one at the side ready to be lifted out. Ella had also got out to deal with the workers after I twigged that we could get to them after all. Not a bad effort really. Sadly we missed an entire side of the pool, where there was a lifeguard who turned out to be rather helpful and would summon help if asked.

The rope throw went slightly worse than expected. We got three casualties in, with Hannah missing her throws, but Teddy was disqualified for gripping the rope in a Superman pose rather than hands together. You'd think that after three years he'd know better! The rescue medley relay wasn't the fastest we've ever done, but it was clean and the changeover between legs 3 and 4 from Teddy to me was smooth. The swim-tow though was very impressive. We'd entered our standard time of 7m30 before we knew who the 4th team member was going to be, and Hannah, bless her, isn't the fastest of swimmers, although her tow stroke is excellent. However we had a good race with Plymouth in the next lane, as well as London A on the far side of the pool, and eventually beat both of them to lodge a time of 7m33! All four of us swam our hearts out; I could barely walk afterwards, and felt rather sick.

Results time wasn't as tense as normal. We weren't expecting anything spectacular, but out of 18 teams we finished 7th which was brilliant. 5th in both SERCs was, in my opinion, a fair reflection of our performance, and for once I wasn't disappointed in any aspect of the competition results.

The A-team (plus an alumnus of the club) having fun at the after-competition social.

 Left to right: Me, Hannah A-K, Teddy, Chris, and Ella. (Credit: David Brown)

The social was great fun, and walking home at 4am as dawn was starting to break was an interesting experience. Overall it was a fitting end to the competitive year. Both Ella and Hannah are leaving next year, and this weekend was a fun way to mark our last competition with each other. Roll on next year.