STEPH (Team Captain) GETS ADDICTED.

In 1994 a friend from agility mentioned she was going on a Flyball training day, and would I like to go too.  Always one to try new things, I said yes!

I took Tigger along and he took to flyball like a duck to water.  He loved it and so did I.

My friend and I spent a good few months training with no box and gradually getting people interested.

Eventually my friend decided that she wasn't really interested in flyball, so she left and we were looking for a new venue to train at.

We found a venue after several false starts and training began in earnest.

As several of us were members of the same obedience club and two of us were on the comittee, we decided to approach the rest of the committee to see if they would sponsor us to get a team up and running. They agreed and we were able to get a set of jumps and a box.

We attended our first tournament in November 1995 at Shepton Mallet.

In 1996 Nicola was roped in to become Tiggers handler. At the age of 10 she did a fantastic job and was regularly asked by other teams to run their dogs if they were a handler short.

We called ourselves THE BRISTOL FLYERS and raced under this name until the BFA decided to register all team names.

At that time the BFA committee decided that any team wanting to use part of the name of one of the original teams that introduced flyball to the UK would not be allowed. As one of those teams was called THE DARTFORD FLYERS, we were not allowed to be called THE BRISTOL FLYERS!!

So, the BRISTOL BALL-ISTICS were born.

The Swifts team name was originally registered for me to get tournament schedules, as at the time Nicola and I were racing with the Red Dragons from Wales. We helped them achieve their fastest ever time (which still stands) of 18.73.

Eventually we decided that it was time for us to run our own team again, and at the beginning of 2006 we raced as THE SWIFTS and have been competing successfully since then.