Reading Swimming Club attended the Aylesbury-based Maxwell SC’s January meet in numbers for the first time in several years, a first visit for many of head coach Graeme Thomas’s squad to the three-year-old Aqua Vale pool.

Reading’s entrants were nearly all from levels of the coaching programme aiming for national or Southern Counties qualification – the district standard now set at two levels, one giving automatic qualification and a second set of "base" times which may suffice when entries have gone in.

Thomas’s charges were also using the Level 1 meet to warm up for the Berks and South Bucks short-course championship series at Maidenhead. Fine performances included three meet records for Louisa Downs (14), two for Chris Boyce (11) and one for Leona Jones (16) and one event where Reading took all three medals in an age group.

This came in Saturday’s second event, as Jones (2:44.13), Leanne Haas and Charlotte Thompson dominated in the 15/16 200m breaststroke. Louise Gillatt also got her meet off to a good start with sixth place in the 13/14 group.

Reading girls again hit top form in the morning’s 100m butterfly and freestyle.

Downs – already a national qualifier in the 100 fly – set a new meet best of 1:06.85 to win the 13/14 group, with Amy Kunicki and Kristina Paige both in the top half of the field of 17.

Emma Zadrozny won the 15/16 100 fly in 1:07.13 and Haas picked up a second silver, with the times good enough to take both girls to Southern Counties at Crystal Palace over the May Day weekend.

Chris Boyce has been Reading’s top boy in the younger age groups this season, and with several older boys ill or away he and Callum Willcox carried the flag for Reading’s male swimmers. After missing a 400 free medal by one place, Boyce claimed a 100 IM bronze – narrowly, but beaten only by two 12-year-olds. Willcox, much younger within the age group, placed ninth.

The 100m free as always attracted the biggest entry – well over 80 girls – and Zadrozny made it two golds in two swims as she won her year from the host club’s Sarah Turner by exactly a second in 1:00.96. Downs was Reading’s next best, fifth in her year, with a sixth for Jones, eighth for Haas and 10^th places for Kunicki and 16-year-old Louisa Herring.

The boys’ 11/12 200m butterfly attracted just two entrants, and astonishingly they finished just a hundredth apart as Boyce edged out Luton’s Charlie Taylor-Smith by the narrowest margin possible.

The girls’ 15/16 100m breaststroke was another going right to the wire. One of the country’s top youth breaststroke swimmers in recent years, Chesham’s Nicola Ballingall, was pressed all the way by Jones whose 1:14.96 took the silver just 0.11 back, while Zadrozny held off Haas for the bronze and Thompson placed seventh.

Downs closed her Saturday programme with an age group 200 free gold, her 2:09.41 almost a second clear of the field. Zadrozny medalled again, a bronze this time, with Herring fourth and Haas fifth, and Kunicki’s seventh put her in the top third of a big 13/14 field.

Like Herring and Haas, seventh-placed Amy Thomas swam inside the "base time" for Southern Counties, with several chances left to push on to the automatic qualifying time of 2:15.

Downs was again in meet record form as Sunday kicked off with the 400 free – her 4:29.01 gold the second fastest swim across all age groups – and Zadrozny collected another silver, with Herring fifth and Thomas seventh. Paige beat the five-minute barrier in placing seventh 13/14 year-old.

The boys’ 200m breaststroke field was disappointingly small at three, but Boyce and Willcox collected the top two places, Boyce – turning 12 before Southern Counties - within sight of a base time and Willcox inside the base time for his 11 year-old group.

Boyce was soon back in the water for the 100 fly, where it took a meet record from Ferndown’s Luke Raggett to deny him the gold, and he set a record himself in the 100 free in 1:10.17 – Willcox fifth this time.

Downs’s 2:22.24 (another record) won the 200 fly by a full 12 seconds, teammate Kunicki second and Paige fourth, and Haas (2:25.22) beat the Southern Counties standard by seven seconds in pipping Zadrozny (2:25.42) to the gold in their year.

Top breaststroker Jones turned the tables on Chesham’s Ballingall over 50 metres, taking the gold in a record 34.31 as the pair led the field by three seconds, with Charlotte Thompson third. Boyce’s 1:29.86 set yet another record in the same stroke over 100 metres, with Willcox again taking the silver.

One feature of coach Thomas’s programme at Reading has been hard work on swimmers’ second and third-best strokes, and this paid off with a 100 backstroke bronze for Jones in a field of 13, while Kunicki had probably her best swim of the meet with a sixth spot.

Reading girls closed the meet on a high in the 200 IM, with further gold for Downs and Zadrozny. Jones, Herring and Haas filled places five to seven in their year, and 11-year-old Frankie Wilkins placed 10^th in her age group. Wilkins had earlier shown exemplary spirit in the 50m back, where an entry time mix-up put her in a heat with much faster swimmers and she turned it to her advantage to take a second off her PB.

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