11 Mar 2011

Pershore S.C. exceed all expectation

 

In the third weekend of the Hereford and Worcester County Swimming Champs at Wolverhampton nine of Pershore Swimming Clubs members secured 33 personal bests (pbs) winning ten medals made up of three gold, four silver and 3 bronze added to the two gold medals won in the 800 and 1500 long distance events over the previous weekends.  

 

On the Saturday sixteen pbs were set with the boys entering the water first in the 100m Individual Medley (IM) with 10 year old Tyler McLean immediately setting about  qualifying for the evening finals with a new pb and the 3rd fastest heat time of 1.24.38 with McLean turning this into a Gold medal in a fingertip finish with an even quicker time of 1.23.97 and climbing to 4th in his end of year UK rankings.  Other pbs followed for 11 year olds Joseph Doyle and Drew Jones  and also twelve year old Harry Sykes swimming in the 13 year old age group his birthday being before the last day of the Championships.

 

The girls were led out by Lizzie Vizard (12) in the 200m breaststroke recording her 1st pb of the weekend with 3.19.51, following this with 38.81 in the 50m backstroke, where Alison Seward recorded 38.68, whilst Tazmin Pugh (11) swam a pb with 34.38 climbing to 1st in the UK rankings and going on to win the finals and presented with her 3rd Gold medal of the Championships.  Pugh's time was a new Competition best performance for an 11 year old.

 

All four boys set pbs once again in the 200m freestyle and were joined by Jack Betteridge also recording his 1st pb of the meet.  For the 100m butterfly Pugh qualified for the finals in 3rd place but improved this when swimming to a new pb of 1.17.03 and a silver medal (1st in UK rankings) and only 3 secs aways from the National Champs Qualifying time.  Doyle and Sykes set new pbs in the 50m backstroke for boys whilst Pugh came through strong in the latter stages of the 400m IM with a 10 second pb recording 5.48.58 (4th in UK rankings).  

 

On the second day Seward and Vizard began by once again setting two of the 17 pbs about to come from club members in the 100m IM with Pugh going on to qualify for the finals in a lowly 7th place but again making a superb comeback with a time of 1.17.81 and a silver medal in the evening finals (3rd UK rankings)  .  For the boys McLean not only set a 6 sec pb but secured his second Gold medal of the weekend in the 200m breaststroke in 3.09.87 (1st UK rankings) with Sykes coming in 5th.  In the 100m backstroke Seward and Pugh again set pbs with Pugh going through to the finals in 1st place but even though recording an even better pb of 1.17.77 had to settle for the silver medal again in a closely fought contest with Caitlin Britt from Redditch and City of Birmingham clubs setting a new Championship best Record for 11 yr olds. This leaves Pugh once again ranked 1st in UK for the end of the year following all the other County Champs results from around the UK coming in and importantly only 1.5 secs away from achieving a National Champs Qualifying time taking place at the end of July.

 

McLean won a bronze medal in the 50m fly event improving from his qualifying position in 4th place from the heats, with Joseph Doyle also improving from 7th qualifying place to 6th setting a new pb of 1.23.46.  Sykes also set a pb in the same event with 39.32 but failed to make the finals.

 

Pugh won a silver medal in the 200m freestyle in a new pb time of 2.24.50 creeping ever nearer to within 4 secs of the National time.  Pugh's ninth medal of the  Championships came in the final of the 50m fly coming in to an agonising 3rd place with less than two tenths of a second separating the top three medal positions.


All news