Tazmin Top Girl in Coventry.
06 Nov 2012
Tazmin Top Girl in Coventry.
In a top grade one Long Course (50m pool) meet Pershore swimmer Tazmin Pugh decided to pit her wits whilst still in mid season training against some of the best swimmers in the Region with a strong showing from clubs as far away as Derby, Brighton and Maidenhead. National qualifiers from the two city elite clubs of Birmingham and Coventry were the main opposition though.
Tazmin started her incredibly heavy programme of attempting to compete in ten events on the same day by immediately taking silver in the 100m backstroke following this in the very next event by taking gold in the 50m freestyle in a new long course personal best (pb) time of 29.85 secs rising to 9th in the UK end of year rankings, finishing the morning session with another pb in the 100m breaststroke of 1:29.37.
The afternoon session began inauspiciously with 5th placing in the 200m Individual Medley (IM) but a new pb in the 200m breaststroke and gold in the 100m freestyle steadied the ship somewhat.
In the final session another gold followed in the 200m free whilst an unexpected win in her weakest stroke the 50m breaststroke together with another long course pb of 41.57. So far Tazmin had been fighting out the medal positions in the separate top 12 year old girl BAGCAT (British Age Group Category) competition with it all coming down to the last two events.
Tazmin rallied what energy she had left taking silver in the 200m back and 100m fly and managed to record the best cumulative points from each of the five categories of sprint (50m); form (200m back, breast, fly); distance (200, 400m free); 100m (all strokes) and 200m IM recording 2,532 pts to take the 12 year old winner's trophy against 2ndplace Victoria Long (City of Birmingham) on 2,101pts and Eva Vickory (City of Coventry) on 2,085 pts.
With this overall trophy Tazmin took home 4 gold medals and three silver consolidating some of her district qualifying times for next June which will also be at Coventry's Olympic size swimming pool. The Pershore swimmer has also just learnt that she has made the short list of three for next week's presentation of the Sports Partnership Sports Awards at Worcester Warriors Six Ways Stadium in the under 18 Junior Female Sports Personality category. At the same presentations she will also learn if she is one of the 8 elite athletes to receive the Joanna Brown Trust Grant for 2012 out of the 70 top class applicants from the County's Sports men and women.
Ian P photo