November 2006
Success at Stockport
Ten swimmers from the Evening Post Sponsored Reading Swimming Club made their way to Stockport last weekend to compete in the team’s first Long Course competition of the new season.
The competition was for swimmers at Level one, the highest standard of open competition available, with the main aim for the swimmers being to sharpen up their racing skills and race in an Olympic length pool, something which most will not have done since the National Championships in August.
The meet was attended by some of the country’s top teams, including many council funded programmes, which draw upon a number of clubs in their area to have the cream of local smaller club’s swimmers compete as one unit at meets such as this. The racing was therefore always going to be good!
Unphased by this, the Reading swimmers performed admirably and saw some very good results, particularly for the time of season. With an emphasis on technical correctness and quality pacing skills, the team did well to achieve a total of twenty one personal best times between them.
Both Adam Barrett and Garry Dixon shared the honour of most number of National Qualification standard times achieved, with three going to each of them. Garry in the 200, 400 and 1500 Fs, and Adam in the 200 Bk, 200 Fs and 400 Fs.
Louisa Downs had a superb 800 Free and recorded a best time of 9.25.47, and in doing so secured her first National Qualification time of the season. The swim was well paced and technically better than she has ever done before, which bodes well for her progress in this event over the next few months.
Zoe Hester also attained a National Qualification Standard in the 100 Bk, not unexpected due to her standing as one of the Country’s top Junior performers for the stroke, particularly in the 200 metres event. Her time was off her best for the 100 metres, but not wholly surprising due to a recent bout of illness prior to the competition.
Another Backstroke swimmer showing great promise is Naomi Herring, who swam a best time in the 50 Bk, and a technically much improved 100 Bk.
Both Alex MacArthur and York Kloppel showed fine sprinting ability in the shorter events, with Alex racing to best times in the 50 Fly and 50 Fs, and York narrowly missing his personal best in the 50 Br by less than 0.5 of a second!
The two youngest members of the team, Frankie Wilkins and Callum Willcox, showed toughness and resilience over the weekend. With Callum recording the highest number of best times of the whole team. Both of these swimmers attended the National Age Group Championships, and based on their performances it is clear that there is every expectation that they will repeat this achievement again in 2007.
Kristina Paige swam in no fewer than 9 events over the weekend and was Reading’s most prolific performer. Her best swims coming in the Freestyle events, all of which were good swims, particularly the 200 Fs in which she recorded a best time.
As previously mentioned, meets scheduled at this time of the season for the top field of swimmers are as much, if not more,about analysing strengths and weaknesses in performance, than recording outright fast swims. If mistakes are going to be made they are better off being made now, rather than later in the season when things really hot up with National Team selections and National championships on the horizon. All the swimmers have plenty to work on over the next few weeks and months, and will be striving to improve on the areas where they have weaknesses, and also to consolidate the many strengths they have.