Crawley might host only a Conference football club, but its swimming facilities across the road at the stunning K2 sports centre can only be described as Premiership standard.
Nearly all Reading SC's top competitors - apart from long-distance specialist Garry Dixon, on a British Swimming training camp in France – tackled the Sussex club's heavily attended Spring Open.
One or two performances did reflect pool-weariness after the Evening Post-sponsored club's own Easter Open, but the meet's second day in particular turned up some gold medal form.
Adam Barrett turned it on with a stunning 100 butterfly. Well inside the younger half of the two-year 14/15 age band, he took gold in 1.01.75 just ahead of Tigersharks' Dean Williamson.
Places two to five all went to 15-year-olds, with Barrett four seconds faster than the next swimmer his own age, almost two inside the national qualifying mark for his own year and just inside the 15s qualifying time.
The swim tops the current national rankings for his age group, but with boys his year having until late June to qualify.
Thirteen-year-old Callum Willcox was also in gold medal form, heading a field of 20 in his 100 breaststroke by over a second in 1.19.31. Willcox also came good late in the day with a silver over 200 metres.
York Kloeppel, 17, was touched out of the bronze in the top age category in the 100 breast by Guildford's Danny Anderson but shone over 50 metres and took third place, just missing the qualifying time for the summer's senior national championships.
Unfortunately, the event is not swum nationally at youth level and young men Kloeppel's age are often up against powerful older racers - the first two home at Crawley were 24 and 21.
Top girls' swim came from Holly Tanner, 17, with her second career-best 200 fly time in successive meets. Tanner, in great form at the Welsh youth championships in Swansea last time out, beat 2.25 for the second meet running as the quicker of only two girls in her age group, her new PB 2.24.37
The 14/15 group provided Tanner's closest competition across the overall field of heats, with just 0.22 covering the medallists and Reading's Kristina Paige in the middle of them in a long-course PB of 2.28.65, just short of the national standard.
Tanner, who missed a national 400 IM time by a whisker in Swansea, achieved it by just seven hundredths this time in a silver-medal swim.
Paige, meanwhile. was also in good shape in the 50 fly (fourth) and 100 free (bronze), both events won by one of the south's top young sprinters in Guildford's Henrietta Dillon. Ellie Wood, 12, took bronze in her 50 fly in a large field.
Naomi Herring's June birth date makes national qualifying just about as tough as it gets, but is still close to making Reading's team for Sheffield in the100 back. Fifth place out of 26 in 1.10.15 at Crawley leaves her needing to shave just a second off before the qualification deadline, and she topped this by one place in the 200 although further off the national mark.
Rachael Mills, 14, made a great attack on one of the toughest national times in her age group, the 200 free, getting within two seconds in 2.15.70 with more opportunities to come.
Mills placed ninth out of 42 in the two-year age band, pushing training partner Paige (seventh in 2.14.76) hard and drastically improving her pre-meet seeding.
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