A team of six swimmers travelled to Crawley over the weekend to compete in the final weekend of the South Eastern Regions Championships.
On the opening day Ella Dias (13) and Beckie Scaife (11) earned bronze medals in their age group’s 400m individual medley qualifying for nationals in the process.
Sunday’s kicked off with the longest event of the championships, the 1500m. Dias won silver with a personal best falling agonisingly short of qualifying for the nationals. The teenager swam to the final of the 200m freestyle achieving a personal best in the 200m backstroke. Despite only competing one weekend of the championships she earned fifth place in her age groups BAGCATS (British Age Groups) awards.
Scaife added to her good start with a performance in the 800m which gave her a place in the nationals. Her recent switch to a more demanding training programme appears to have paid off. She narrowly missed out on national times in the backstroke and 200m freestyle final but achieved third place in her BAGCATS.
The youngest swimmer to make the trip, ten-year-old Nathan Corrigan won two silver medals, achieving personal bests in the 200m individual medley and 400m freestyle. Corrigan then added the team’s only gold medley of the tour with another personal best in the 100m breaststroke to earn second place in his BAGCATS.
Twelve-year-olds Danny Blandin and Garth Jackson produced top ten performances on the first day’s swimming. Both swimmers made improvements on previous results with good times in all of their events.
The oldest swimmer in the group, Declan Bourke (14) only swam twice over the two days and started promisingly with a ninth place finish in the 200m individual medley. He then produced a sterling performance in the 100m breaststroke in which he missed out on his national qualifying time by less than a second.
Tiger’s official Paul de Feu said: ‘It was an excellent weekend for all involved with everyone performing well at their level. To have three swimmers achieving BAGCATS award is superb.’
