The expression ‘resting on one’s laurels’ has been overheard recently at the splendid Noosa Aquatic Centre, where Noosa Masters swimmers share coffee and comments after sessions in the pool.
The club’s swimmers are no strangers to the mythology-laden laurels of victory. In fact, they have now secured their 11th consecutive victory in the Vorgee National Endurance competition.
Every year since 2013, the Noosa club has streaked away from over 200other masters’ clubs around the nation, leaving them in their proverbial wake. But the 2024 victory has been less emphatic, prompting those hushed conversations about ‘resting on one’s laurels’.
Endurance co-ordinator Denise DeCarlo’s calculator has been running hot.
Put simply, last year saw Noosa’s points tally drop by 3094. More alarmingly, the second-placed Campbelltown club increased its total by 1112. Noosa’s comfortable margin of 6103 points in 2023 had become an anxious gap of 1897 in 2024.
At that rate, 2025 would spell disaster. No wonder some doomsayers were even muttering the terms tortoise and hare.
But, in reality, the aphorism about statistics and lies is more apt. Far from being a cringeworthy shame, Noosa’s lost 3094 points are almost fully explained by the absence in 2024 of three of Noosa’s top swimmers. Each of them always posts the maximum 1005 individual points. For rival clubs targeting Noosa, the statistics offer little encouragement.
And so Noosa Masters can celebrate wholeheartedly the winning of the national endurance trophy for the eleventh year in succession.
Congratulations flow to all 57 swimmers who amassed the 17,170 points. Already members are hard at work in the pool, aiming to eclipse the slightly discordant result of 2024.
There’s no resting on their laurels, but there’s certainly the hope that those top swimmers don’t go travelling again in 2025.
