A few brave Southwold swimmers, Sophie Wilkins, Jessica Shaw, and sisters Georgina and Emily Locke headed off to Millfield for the ASA SWR Winter Short Course Championships on the 6th & 7th December. Jasna Nickells had been due to join them but an ankle injury during a football match at schooll earlier in the week forced her to withdraw.
Jess Shaw had a full schedule, with five races on Saturday and six on Sunday. Having been unwell all week, and unable to train, the decision to compete against the might of Plymouth Leander, Mount Kelly, Millfield, Taunton Deane as well as performance colleges in Bournemouth plus others, was indeed a brave one! We were certainly a small minnow in a very big pond! Plymouth were rumoured to have brought along a squad of no less than 107 swimmers!
Jess was still struggling with poor health and fitness, which clearly showed in all of the 100, 200 or 400m races, but refused to withdraw from any race and was still able to put in some quick 50’s making the 50 Back Open Final, the very last race on Saturday, a very, very long day. Sophie Wilkins 200m back was an improved time credit to hard work during training.
Sunday was an even earlier start with a 08.45 warm up with Jess being joined by the Locke sisters. Georgie swam a good PB in the 200m Breast of 2:58.64 whilst Emily had a long wait until the afternoon before storming to a new PB in the 100m Fly of 1:09.75, only 0.3s away from the club record. Jess’s swimming followed a similar pattern to Saturday which culminated in her digging in deep to make the 50m Breast Open Final with a new PB and club record time of 33.85. This time she did herself and the club proud with a textbook swim from start to finish, in what was the penultimate race of the entire weekend, improving on her heat time and finishing runner up and Junior Champion with a time of 33.34. Well done and a great example of gutsy determination. Other club records that were set were the 50 Free, 200 Breast and 200 Back.
A huge thank you must go to Simon for giving up every daylight minute of the weekend supporting his swimmers.
