North East Regional Short Course (25m) Championships, Sheffield

Write up from our visit to the North East Regional Short Course (25m) Championships on ov 4th & 5th November at Ponds Forge, Sheffield.

Well, what a weekend that was! Based on that performance Wear Valley ASC can claim to be ranked in the top 20 of the 61 NE of England swimming clubs that competed at these championships. Wow, wow and yet another wow. 

Before mentioning the swimmers, a word about the role of Corinne Wilson and Alex Grayson, our judges that attended these championships. They, along with other parents that have recently trained to be judges, are a key resource for our club and take on a great deal of responsibility. It’s also worth noting that we are required to provide judging resources at such events. If we don’t we’d be fined £200 by Swim England for the whole weekend, so a big thank you to both Corinne and Alex for being our representatives over the weekend. 

In the pool at the NERs we were represented by Thomas Power in the Open Events, George Anderson in 15/16 Age Group, Josh Whitton in the 13 year Age Group and then Callum Wilson, Charlotte Wilson, Caitlyn McLean, Freya Colling & Rosie Grayson in the 11 year old group. It is no exaggeration to say they are all stars. Everyone got at least one PB and overall they amassed a total of 31 PBs between them. 

Caitlyn and Rosie got Gold and Bronze respectively in the 50m Fly and Caitlyn also picking up Golds in the 100m & 200m Fly and silver in the 100m IM. Exceptional performances from both of them. Rosie also managed to make mince-meat of her PBs in her 200m Fly and 200m Back, knocking 17 seconds off both of them. No, that’s not a typo! 

Callum took a whopping 9 seconds off his 200 Free and would have reduced his 200 Breast by a similar amount if he hadn’t got DQ’d. We’re not sure what the technical infringement was, but perhaps it was blowing raspberries at Caitlyn as he was storming down the back straight? Certainly, it seems to be a regular part of training in the Competitive Development squad! 

Charlotte got 3 PBs from her four races and continues to reduce her backstroke times almost every occasion she gets in the water. We’re looking forward to seeing Charlotte compete when the LC season restarts where she’s currently ranked 2nd in the backstroke in the N&D counties; less than a second from being 1st. 

Freya was so unlucky to be just a few hundredths of a second outside the revised QTs for two of her events, but she still showed us all what she’s made of in the 200m Breast by knocking off nearly 7 seconds from her PB. 

Josh, now in the 13 year old age group, has much tougher times to better, but still managed to reduce his 200m Back PB by a further 2.5 seconds down to 2:37.50. Well done Josh. Having Josh’s infectious, positive, happy personality around is a great boost to all the younger ones in the team. 

George swam his 100 Back in a time of 1:04.34, smashing his PB by 3 ½ seconds, which is ridiculous when George is going so fast already! That’s the equivalent of Usain Bolt knocking half a second off his 100m dash PB! 

Thomas regularly swims in the Scottish National Championships and getting two PBs from his three events at Sheffield isn’t going to do him any harm at the Nationals next year. Well done Thomas. 

Finally, there’s one other person that cannot go without a mention and a huge thank you for his development of our swimmers and the fantastic performances at the NERs. It is of course Dominic Cummings …. Uhm wait, maybe that “thank you” was for putting Barnard Castle on the map. 

Obviously, those that truly deserve the plaudits are the coaching team, headed most ably by Paul. Thank you so much for all the hard work you put in to make the club a success.