The North East regional local league for canoe polo started up again this weekend, organised and ran by Tees Tigers.  The location has moved a little further north this year, from it’s usual pool in Darlington to Tynemouth pool, but with the first tournament at West Denton in Newcastle.  The local league format is a great way to promote the sport in the region, giving those players not competing in the national leagues the chance to compete over the winter and those who are some much needed practice!

Read on to see the latest league table. Read more

Wagon Lane was a brilliant event for the young Tiger members with prizes galore.  Bradford and Bingley Canoe Club hosted the event again and we were able to provide large numbers to support the event.  It’s a brilliant race to get the youngsters started and the results were brilliant.  It was good to see so many of the youngsters helping each other and coaching the newer paddlers.

Saturday saw Charlie Frankcom make it up into division 3 in Kayak, finishing second behind a very strong local paddler.  In Division 3 the Tigers were dominant in the C1 categories with Brandon Watson and Beth Kelly taking the wins in their respective categories, winning by a considerable margin and doubling up in the C2 to take a second victory each. Other results to note were Morgan and Ben in Div 3, both of whom are racing very well and already looking at promotion to division 2.
 
The usual saturday night splash about took place with free practice and lots of paddlers on the water, including a few dads, we’ll have a few racing next time I think!  We also had a little bit of excitement when Ben Watson, there for the social, ended up dropping his boatcam into the river after a bit of bumper canoes!
 
Sunday was again a very strong showing on behalf of the Tigers with some great results, Brandon and Bethan both taking the wins in C1, Charlie had a brilliant first result in division 3.
 
Keep up the good work!

Nicky

On 25th April Tees Tigers will be holding a memorial paddle/race in memory of Simon Fletcher. As I’m sure most will remember Simon was killed in a tragic accident when training at Grandtully on the river Tay.

The format of the day will be a race/paddle (approximately 3km) starting at 12:00 (midday) and then a BBQ. The race/paddle will be an open format (with handicaps by boat type) so come and paddle whatever you like.

The race winner will be awarded the ‘Simon Fletcher Memorial Cup’ which we plan to have engraved with the winners name each year (the plan is for this to become an annual event).

The event will be held at our base at the River Tees Watersports Centre.

There will be a small entry fee for the event of £5 but the proceeds will be donated to Tayside Rescue who worked so hard to try and rescue Simon.

Please email entries and interest in this event to teestigers@hotmail.co.uk.

Your attendance would be much appreciated for the first running of this event.

Best Regards,

Tees Tigers

It’s that time of the year again, the slalom season is upon us and it’s now time for the first race of the season!

The Tigers are hosting the first race on Saturday 26th February 2011 at the Dolphin Centre in Darlington town centre (DL1 5RP).

This is the first opportunity for a lot of our youngsters to try slalom in a race environment (and our slightly older novices!).  It was a fantastic event last year so lets see if we can improve and make it better this time around.

There will be boats for everyone to use, and we will have all the club c1s and c2s for people to try out.  Can we beat the 26 c2 crews we had last year?

Entries from 6pm, racing starts at 7pm.

This event is open to everyone, so feel free to invite your friends and given that it is a pool slalom no prior experience is necessary!

Well it took the latest issue of Canoe Focus to come out for the editor to find out about this one.  It’s not like Nicky to keep quiet but this time he’s obviously been modest!

Nicky Cresser being presented his award by Olympic K1 500m Bronze medallist Ian Wynne

Back in December, Tees Tiger’s Head Coach, Nicky Cresser, attended the Canoe England Coaching Conference in Swindon, braving the bad weather, where the winners of the Volunteer & Recognition Awards 2010 were announced.  His efforts were paid off when awarded the ‘Impact on Community’ award for all his hard work for Tees Tigers and the sport of canoeing.  Find out about all the award winners at http://www.canoe-england.org.uk/media/pdf/Website%20article%20publisher%20v2.pdf.

Well done Nicky!

A quick note to all Tees Tigers members. If you had previously registered for the old website design, you should by now have received a link to confirm your user registration. If you haven’t, you will need to register again using the link at the top of this page. Anyone who has not previously registered -why not?!

Updates and improvements to come in the next few weeks will be to add some of the content provided by memebrs so far, plus we’ll be adding Nicky’s long awaited events calendar. You’ll also be able to comment on articles and posts without logging in and write and upload content of your own.

Any queries, just email me at nw neillwatson.com