Weston-super-Mare Swimming Club

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Llanelli Novice Gala and Aquae Sulis Grand Prix events

National County Team Championships

GB Swimmer Visit

National League Round 1

National Inter-League semi-final (South)

Bristol North Weekend Two

Bristol North Weekend One

National Age Groups and National Youth Championships in Sheffield

Duel in the Pool II

Esme in Loughborough

World Class Technique & Turns Clinic

Clevedon & Chard Open Meet

Stunning swims in Southern Junior League (SJL) Final

SWR Week 2

SWR Week 1

Congratulations to Melissa Bramwell

SWR Relays 22 May

Somerset ASA Championships

Caption Competition

December 2011 Events

December for Weston-super-Mare swimming club involved 3 weekends in a row at Millfield school.

The first of these was for the South West Region Championships. Captain Esme Gullick swam multiple lifetime bests to achieve 4 National Qualifying Times (NQTs) and finish 3rd in the 200m butterfly and 200m backstroke and 2nd in the 200m Individual Medley. Evan King, at 12 years old, won the 16 and under 200m butterfly with both girls inside the time (in a 25m pool) that they need to achieve in a 50m pool to qualify to compete at the Olympic Trials in March.

The following week saw the return of a much larger squad to Millfield to represent WSMSC in the National Arena Swimming League (Western) Division One Final. Having finished second to Seagulls in rounds one and two, WSM were hoping to surprise a few teams and continue their recent tradition of National League Finals, in achieving a higher placed finish than their initial seeding. Going into the final seeded 4th meant that this year, that would be no mean feat.

The competition started brilliantly with 13 year old Lucy Davies swimming a massive Personal Best, taking her to within 0.4 seconds of her first National Qualifying time, to finish 1st in the Open (any age group allowed) 200m Individual Medley. The squad, of which several were feeling unwell, performed consistently well against strong opposition. Yet again, Seagulls were running away with the competition in terms of points, with City of Cardiff in 2nd place. The battle for 3rd was close fought however, and at the penultimate points announcement, WSM and Torfaen County were tied at 155 points each. Two fantastic individual race wins (at least 5m clear of the field) from Captain Esme Gullick, backed up by strong team swims from younger swimmers that were competing in older age groups as well as their own, gave WSM valuable points. As the gala came to a close, these hard fought points proved valuable, as Seagulls finished with 329 points, City of Cardiff with 278 and WSM 229 to Torfaen’s 227. With the top 3 teams winning places in the Premier Division for 2012, WSM’s promotion came down to tenths of a second and was the result of determined race finishing and sharp reaction times.

Weekend three, the Plymouth Leander Christmas Meet, coincided with the end of the school term and the swimming cycle. This mean that the swimmers were rested and ready to swim fast. This was demonstrated by Esme Gullick with 3rd places in the heats of the 100m backstroke (Esme decided to withdraw from the final to concentrate on the 100m butterfly) and the final of the 200m backstroke. This was bettered by 2nd in the 100m butterfly with a fantastic performance in her final swim of the meet (and the year) to win the 200m butterfly, inside the 17 years olds meet best time, but just outside the best time set for her own age group. Lucy Davies Continued her winning ways from the week before (an achievement in itself at such a high level meet, with fantastic quality opposition) finishing 1st in all 3 of her swims. Lucy was just 0.5 sec outside of the NQT and 2.5 sec away from qualifying for the Olympic Trials in the 400 Individual Medley. The 200 breaststroke saw Lucy achieve her first NQT in the heats, followed within a few hours by a time which qualifies Lucy to compete at Olympic Park in London in March, at the Olympic Trials event. Lucy finished the meet with a 2nd NQT in the 200 Individual Medley, just 1.5 sec from a second Olympic Trails time.

The season finished with the annual Christmas Gala, including the headline event: the Parents v Lifeguards v Waterpolo v Coaches Relay. Congratulations to the Lifeguard team (consisting of several WSMSC members) but thank you to all who got involved in the spirit of things and took part on the night.

The squads have now had a couple of days rest over Christmas and will soon be back in training to better these fantastic swims again.

For more information regarding club swimming from LTS up to National Level in Weston-super-Mare, please contact Zara (Learn To Swim) or Rachel (Head Coach).

Llanelli Novice Gala and Aquae Sulis Grand Prix Events

The 2 hour coach journey was endured due to differences in swimming laws in Wales which mean that children are allowed to compete from age eight. 34 swimmers aged 8-12, some of whom were taking part in their very first competition, excitedly waited for the 62 event gala to begin.

In order to ensure that the gala was for true Novice Swimmers, the organisers installed "no faster than" cut off times, in the hope that more experienced, faster swimmers would be rested. Any race won in a time faster then these pre-determined marks resulted in no points for that team. Obviously fast swimming is always a priority over gaining points, therefore a disqualification and no points (for swimming too fast) was, for a change, a desirable result.

The gala saw some great swims and fantastic support from team members and parents alike, with the final results showing that WSM swimmers were disqualified in 15 (24%) of the 62 events. In their first ever competition, Sarah Carr (8) and Maddy Soper (8) won no points (for being too fast) with fellow novice speedy swimmers: Ben Jones, Olivia Deakin, Luke Yeates, Harry Reynolds and Aimee Hunter-Weldon also swimming too fast to score. Big congratulations go to Noah Statter (8), Ben Bradley-Wilson (9), Lauren Hookway (8), Charlie Deakin (8), Charlie Webb-Sperrings (8), Sophie Murphy-Adams (10), Reece Coombes (10), Katie Price (11) and Chloe Cox (12) for competing for the very first time.

Thank you to the parent volunteers for helping to look after and organise so many brand new swimmers, giving them an enjoyable and successful view of what swimming competition is all about.

Over this same weekend, some of WSM's more "seasoned pro's" were racing alongside stars of GB swimming including World Record Holders, at the Aquae Sulis Grand Prix held at the University of Bath. Special congratulations go to Jasmine Moroney and Rachel Anderson for achieving their first ever South West Regional Qualifying Times for next June's event in Plymouth.

For more information regarding club swimming from LTS up to National Level in Weston-super-Mare, please contact Zara (Learn To Swim) or Rachel (Head Coach).

Ponds Forge, Sheffield

In a squad dominated by swimmers from Millfield School, Weston-super-Mare female Captain Esme Gullick and fellow 2011 National Qualifier Evan King, received their first representative honours.

The competition, littered with future stars (being observed by Head Coach at British Gas ITC Loughborough, Ben Titley) and members of the 2011 GB Junior Team, always incites great team spirit and, following their early warm up, the swimmers set about their mission to “show their colours”.

Evan and Esme are in the middle of high intensity training at the moment and, not being rested or tapered, personal best times were targeted but not necessarily expected.

The first race for Evan was the 12/13 girls medley relay. Evan split 30.75 (1.5 seconds faster than her official short course PB) and the team finished in a fantastic 2nd place, behind the mighty Lancashire, who were going for their 10th National County Tam Championship title in a row!

After swimming 100m butterfly in 1:09, the previous week in Exeter, Esme was hoping to get closer to her personal best of 1:05. The nerves of performing on the big stage did their job and Esme swam fantastically, from an outside lane to finish 3rd in her heat and 9th overall in the 16/17 age group (5th in the 16s) in 1:03.20.

The 16/17 girls team managed 5th place in their Medley relay, with Esme’s split of 29.20 a whole second faster than her official short course PB.

The 6x50m freestyle relay brought the event to a very exciting close, with Somerset narrowly losing the lead in the last meter of the race, to finish 3rd behind Lancashire and Middlesex.

Somerset finished 5th in Division one, which is made up of 20 teams, with a further 19 teams in division two.

Evan with some of the Somerset team

GB Swimmer Visit

Swimmers from Weston-super-Mare Swimming Club were rewarded for hours of hard work (bag packing), when the club hired two GB swimmers to run a session at Hutton Moor.

Michael Jamieson (5th 200 breaststroke, World Championships, Shanghi 2011) and Jess Dickons (1st 200 butterfly, World University Games, Shenzhen 2011) ran 2 skills based sessions for approximately 100 swimmers aged 8-16.

The swimmers performed brilliantly and were a credit to the club with their engagement in everything Michael and Jess said and their enthusiasm for swimming.

The club is grateful for Jess and Michael’s time and hope that the swimmer’s excitement for the sport will be evident by even higher numbers attending training in the forthcoming weeks/months.

For more information regarding club swimming from LTS up to National Level in Weston-super-Mare, please contact Zara (Learn To Swim) or Rachel (Head Coach).

League one was split into 3 galas randomly, but WSM’s draw appeared to be the hardest of the 3 given that they were up against Bleanau Gwent and Truro, who had both finished above them in 2010 and Seagulls, who have experienced an influx of strong swimmers this year due to their association with former World Record holder Zoe Baker. Looking at previous form (and the new developments at Seagulls) WSM were realistically expecting a 4th place.

After the first 2 Open events, even this looked optimistic! However, WSM have a fantastic junior team (as seen by the recent performances in the Junior League) and the next 6 relays (2x11/under, 2x13/under, 2x15/under) resulted in 1x1st, 2x2nd and 3x3rd places.

During the individual events, the 11yr olds continued to bring in the good results with all swimmers finishing in the top 3. Individual race winners were Oscar Rogers (50 backstroke), Esme Gullick (100 butterfly), Reece Trapani (50 backstroke and 50 freestyle) and Jess Dadds (50 breaststroke), so that before the final set of relays the points stood at: Seagulls 179, Truro 121, WSM 120 and Bleanau Gwent 111.

The final set of relays again saw great performances from the younger swimmers with 1x1st and 1x2nd for the 11/unders and 2x3rd for the 13/under.

Fabulous team swims meant that the final scores were Seagulls 268, WSM 178, Truro 166, Bleanau Gwent 164; a great result form WSM meaning that they can be optimistic of achieving a place in the A final in December and scaring a few teams that have had slightly easier first round draws!

Special mention must go to Evan King and Lucy Davies who both swam 9 races and Reece Trapani who swam in 7. This reliance on WSM’s younger swimmers is due to a low number of swimmers in the Open age group at present. Any senior swimmers who would be excited to compete again are encouraged to contact Rachel.

Given the quality of opposition (Hillingdon’s elite squad is fed by at least 4 local swimming clubs and Boldmere boasts membership of over 500 in comparison to WSM’s 140), WSM were treating this as their “cup final”, and focus had been put on achieving individual personal best times, rather than gala placing or race points.

The team was given the best start possible by the 12yr Girls Medley team of Emily Watkins, Florence Davis, Evan King and Becca Lucas who finished first, two seconds faster than they their final time from June. The first set of relays continued with an additional 3 teams (9yr girls freestyle team, 11yr girls freestyle team and 11yr boys freestyle team)

Rising to the challenge, individual race PBs were achieved by Toby Daniel, Evan Brunsdon, Immy Moroney, Evan King, Natasha Edmondston-Low (x2), Rebecca Lucas (x2), James Bramwell and Will Daniel.

Bagging top points for their team, Rachel Anderson (x2), Evan King (x2) and James Bramwell won their individual races, against quality opposition. Toby Daniel and Lauren Hodgkin also swam well to achieve top 3 race positions against tough opposition, including those that have competed at National Championships.

Thank you to the parent supporters for their rousing encouragement for over 2 hours and to Lynn Stanbury for making sure that everyone was in the right place at the right time.

WSM finished in a very respectable 6th position and now look forward to the (senior) National League, which kicks off this weekend in Exeter.

For more information regarding club swimming from LTS up to National Level in Weston-super-Mare, please contact Zara (Learn To Swim) or Rachel (Head Coach).

Bristol North Weekend Two

Session one of the concluding day of the Bristol North Open Meet, held at Hutton Moor, saw a continuation in the success that had been witness by Weston-super-Mare Swimming Club, during the previous week.

The finals saw Bronze medals being won by Rachel Anderson (50m breaststroke), Lauren Hodgkin (100m butterfly) and Toby Daniel (50m front crawl). Silver medals went to Will Daniel (100 backstroke) and Rachel Anderson (50 front crawl) and Will Daniel also won Gold in the 100m butterfly.

Additional finalist included Toby Daniel (50 breaststroke), Natasha Edmondston-Low (50 breaststroke) and the ‘B’ team in the 11yr girls freestyle relay, anchored with a fantastic final 50m by Alicia Pollard (aprox. a 4 second personal best), which very nearly resulted in a bronze medal.

The highlight of this session was the 4 relay victories, by the 8/9 girls and boys and the 11 and under girls and boys. This meant that, during the 2 week competition, the 8/9 and 11 year old relay teams from WSM, won 8 out of 8 trophies. This impressive display reinforces WSM’s qualification, as one of six teams, for the Junior League Southern Area Final on Sunday 2nd October.

The 8/9yr and 11yr girls and boys winning relay teams

Fantastic final swims resulted in individual Silver medals for Immy Moroney (50m butterfly) and Chloe Knight (100m breaststroke), with Gold medals won by Immy Moroney (50m backstroke) and Rebecca Lucas (100m Front crawl).

Additional finalist during the evening session included Millie Dadds (100m breaststroke & 100m front crawl), Jasmine Moroney (100m front crawl) and the ‘B’ team in the 12yr girls medley relay which again came very close to winning a bronze medal.

Fantastic results, which were unexpected so early in the season, from numerous swimmers, bode well for the rest of the year. Watch this space!!

For more information regarding club swimming from LTS up to National Level in Weston-super-Mare, please contact Zara (Learn To Swim) or Rachel (Head Coach).

Bristol North Weekend One

Junior Swimmers dominate during first weekend of Bristol North Open Meet.

The Olympic swimming season started for Weston-super-Mare swimmers with the madness that is Bristol North’s Junior Open Meet. WSM’s coaches like to see how everyone is doing at the start of the season, so enter multiple teams into this event. Not only is this then a test for the swimmers, but also for the Team Managers, who volunteer to help dozens of swimmers to be in the right place at the right time, with all their equipment, swimming the right stroke!

The afternoon session, for the 9 and 11yr olds, started better than ever imagined with the finals seeing all of WSM’s relay teams taking first place. The highlight being that WSM had two 8/9yr boys teams, when no other club with the exception of Keynsham could field a single team. It was great to see a final (of three teams) including 2 WSM teams.

In addition to the dominant display of team depth, individual event winners included Rachel Anderson (50 butterfly), Toby Daniel (25 butterfly) and Will Daniel (100 freestyle). Narrowly missing trophies, winning silver medals, were Rachel Anderson and Toby Daniel (50 backstroke) and Will Daniel (100 breaststroke). Also making finals were Jessie Dadds (3rd 100 breaststroke), Joe Thorne and Natasha Edmondston-Low.

8/9 Year old boys and girls 4x25m freestyle relay winning teams

Individual event winners included Becca Lucas (100 backstroke) and Immy Moroney (50 breaststroke). Immy also won a silver medal (50 freestyle) and big sister Jasmine took bronze (100 backstroke). The highlight of this session was the 12yr girls 100 butterfly; the final included five WSM swimmers and finished with a Weston 1-2-3 following impressive personal bests from Jasmine Moroney, Millie Dadds and Ellie Wallace.

The Open Meet concludes next Saturday with WSM hoping to win more silverware for the trophy cabinet.

For more information regarding club swimming from LTS up to National Level in Weston-super-Mare, please contact Zara (Learn To Swim) or Rachel (Head Coach).

Qualifying for her first Nationals at aged 12, Evan King (pictured) took part in both the 100 and 200 meters butterfly. Having only achieve the qualifying times a few weeks before the entry date, anyone who didn’t know Evan may have thought that just going to Sheffield was an achievement in itself. Those that do know Evan will realise that she is a perfectionist (a good trait to have) and in the 6-8 weeks since achieving her NQTs she had worked incessantly, attending 6-8 training sessions per week and committing to morning sessions before school, to ensure that she would be able to perform well during the heats.

Evan’s 100m qualifying time (1:09.45) meant that she stood a good chance of achieving an outside lane in the final. Her outstanding heat swim of 1:07.81 far surpassed all expectations and qualified her 2nd fastest for the final, turning several heads. Raising her game once again to set yet another lifetime best (1:06.92), Evan finished in a fantastic 4th place, with an amazing final swim.

The next day brought the 200 butterfly, which Evan had qualified for in 14th (2:35.81), therefore just reaching the final (i.e. making the top 10) was the optimistic target that was agreed. Another phenomenal swim (2:30.34) meant that Evan was seeded 4th going into the final. Making the most of her last swim of the Championships and really attacking the 3rd length, meant that Evan finished 6th in her age group in the country in 2:30.46.

Following a shoulder injury, which resulted in weeks of disrupted training, Esme was not overly confident about completing her 200 meters butterfly, so the new life time best of 2:24.68 was very well received. Having the 200 meters backstroke in the same session was also not ideal, so a two second lifetime best of 2:23.17 (from a qualifying time of 2:25.15) was a very impressive result.

Following a well-deserved rest day, Esme achieved two more personal bests of 1:05.74 in the 100 butterfly and 1:06.50 in the 100 backstroke to complete an extremely successful 10 days in Sheffield for the Weston-super-Mare girls.

In addition to the support that Esme received from Hutton Moor Leisure Centre and Weston Chiropractic Clinic in the run up to the Nationals, WSMSC would like to thank Taunton Deane Swimming Club for providing supplementary sessions so that Evan and Esme were able to train alongside other National Qualified athletes from Somerset. In addition to this, the increased quality of Monday night training sessions at WSMSC, accommodating talented swimmers from Clevedon and Backwell, has also helped to create a focused and motivated training group, for swimmers that want to achieve.

For more information regarding club swimming from LTS up to National Level in Weston-super-Mare, please contact Zara (Learn To Swim) or Rachel (Head Coach).

Coaches from Clevedon and Weston-super-Mare swimming club like to end the swimming season on a high and for the second year running, Hutton Moor was the venue for the Duel In The Pool.

Developed in 2003 by USA Swimming, the Duel Meet was a way to develop rivalry between the two largest swimming nations of Australia and the United States. The Head Coaches from each club watched the USA take on the E-Stars (a combined British, German and Italian team) in Manchester in December 2009 and decided that the format (with a bit of tweaking) would work really well between the two clubs.

With one less age group, it was difficult to find an empty lane in any of this year’s 30 events.
The first 4 relays gave Weston their first 4 wins with fantastic split times from Kate Davies, Nick Kuht and Becca Lucas. All four 12 and under girls freestyle teams finished in the top five, with only the Clevedon ‘A’ Team depriving WSM of overall dominance.

The twenty individual events gave WSM 17 first places. The highlight being event 11, the girls 12 and under 50m freestyle, in which of the 8 swimmers, WSM (Becca Lucas, Millie Dadds, Esme Bird and Lauren Gifford) finished in 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th, again producing some fantastic times.

The last set of relays brought a further 4 wins for the WSM teams with the 12 and under girls repeating their success from earlier in the evening.

The night finished with SKINS, a continuous competition whereby competitors race against themselves over a number of rounds, each starting after a fixed time from the start of the previous round. The slowest swimmer in each round is eliminated, until an eventual winner is found. The male and female skins competition both finished with one swimmer from Clevedon and one from WSM. The atmosphere was electric during both of these races with the whole squad getting behind their remaining representative. The final results was a win for Clevedon in the male SKINS and for WSM (Lucy Titchin) in the female SKINS.

The challenge now is to make all Tuesday training session this exciting! If you are interested in becoming part of WSM swimming club, please contact Rachel (Head Coach) or Zara (Learn to Swim Coordinator)

Weston-super-Mare Captains Esme Gullick and Nick Kuht receiving the Duel in the Pool shield from Somerset ASA Past President Pete Gonsalves.

Esme, who is now able to train full time for the 4 events that she has qualified for at this year’s National Youth Championships, spent 4 days at the prestigious University, renowned for producing athletes well known on the World and Olympic stage.

Head Coach Ian Armiger welcomed Esme into the programme which saw her training alongside World Championships Qualifiers Lizzie Simmonds, Fran Halsall and current World Record Holders, Jo Jackson and Liam Tancock. A guest to the Loughborough programme during Esme’s stay was double Olympic Medallist Rebecca Adlington. The squad were in hard training before heading off to a holding camp in Japan, before competing in Shanghai between the 24th and 31st July.

WSM Swimming Club would like to thank Hutton Moor for the support they have given to Esme during the run up to the National Championships in Sheffield in July.

The individual races began and first places were achieved by Rachel Anderson, Jessie Dadds, Evan King and Immy Moroney. Lauren Hodgkin’s lightening fast first 25 in the 11yr 50 fly was too much to claw back and the up and coming youngster came home more than 2 seconds ahead of her nearest rival, in a new Personal Best time. Male Captain Reece Trapani went for the same race tactic in the 50 freestyle and finished almost a second clear of a strong 12yr boys field in a very impressive 28.96. This made the points at the half way mark WSM 151, SX3 151, Swim Bournemouth 131. The excitement level rose again!!

Female Captain, Lucy Davies blitzed the field in the 12yr 50 breaststroke, winning by well over a second. A tighter finish to the 50 backstroke gained her another 8 points for the team. Rachel Anderson also gained full points from her 2 individual races and Bradley Lucas was never far from the blocks as he held his own against swimmers 2 yrs older than him to help out in the less populated age groups.

Altogether the team achieved 18 individual PBs from Toby Daniel, Jess Dadds, Bradley Lucas, Immy Moroney, Evan King, Evan Brunsdon, Lauren Hodgkin, Will Daniel, Reece Trapani, Lucy Davies, James Bramwell, Joe Thorne and Chloe Knight. At the beginning of the final set of relays (9 races to go) it was still all to play for with WSM 247, SX3 244 and Swim Bournemouth 226.

SWR BAGCat 10yr Presentation

SWR BAGCat 12yr Presentation

Some photos from the competition below

Immy Moroney who won silver in the 10yr girls 400 freestyle

The girls 11-13yrs 4x200 freestyle relay who won gold (Hannah Vallance, Indea Lucas, Lucy Davies, Evan King)

Lucy Davies who won silver in the 12yr girls 200 brst

Evan winning gold in the 12yrs 100 fly

Pictured below are the 9/10 girls Medley Team (Alice Davies, Jessie Dadds, Jordan Coombes, Rachel Anderson) who won Silver.

Other medal winning teams were the 9/10 boys (Oscar Rogers, Joe Thorne, Bradley Lucas, Joe Ham) who were 2nd in the Freestyle Relay and 1st in the Medley Relay and the 11/12 girls (Becca Lucas, Lucy Davies, Evan King, Indea Lucas, Ailsa Craig) who won silver in both the Freestyle and Medley Relays.

There were some fantastic times achieved on the day, some of which were well inside official PBs. This suggests that we need to get a few more entries for the Summer Open Meets so that we can get some new times on the PB list :)

Medalists from the girls 200 fly:

Evan King (2:34.21) was 7th in the Championship and 1st in the 12yr age group.

Esme Gullick (2:22.38) was 2nd overall, 1st in the Junior Championship and 1st in the 14/15yr age group.

Alice Davies (3:34.64) was 3rd in the 10yr age group.

Other medalists, not pictured, were Rachel Anderson (3:41.77) (2nd in the 9yr age group) and Ellie Wallace (3:05.85) (3rd in the 11yr age group).

The 12/under girls freestyle relay team won a silver medal.

Evan King, Lucy Davies, Ailsa Craig and Indea Lucas all swam on, or under their personal best times, to give a fantastic overall team time of 2:02.31.

Note that in 2010 the girls 9-12 freestyle relay was won in 2:04.37.

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