Royal Tunbridge Wells Monson Swimming Club (Monson) made a superb start to this year’s Kent County Amateur Swimming Association Championships campaign opening with a golden double and adding further medals on the opening weekend of 800m and 1500m races held at the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre.
Men’s Team Captain, Callum Ryan (16 years) was the first swimmer in action competing in the 1500m Freestyle, the distance event contested by the men. Callum set the tone for the Monson performances to follow swimming a very well paced and controlled race to come home in a time of 17:45.44 a Personal Best (PB), a new club age group record and secure the gold medal for the 16 year age group, Callum’s first County title.
Callum’s performance also secured him 5th place in the junior Event and 7th in the senior ranks.
Freestyle specialist, Caitlin Fearon (12 years) was the next in action in the 800m Freestyle, the women’s distance event contested.
Because of changes to qualification for this year’s championships Caitlin found herself seeded in a slower heat than she would have preferred and had to swim for the entire race alone and against the clock.
Leading from the start, Caitlin won her heat by over 25m in a time of 9:38.68, a new Event Best Performance, club age group record, 18
seconds inside the National Qualifying time and a staggering 37 seconds ahead of second place. Caitlin also narrowly missed taking bronze in the junior category and the minor placings in the senior event where she finished seventh. Caitlin’s performance also places her at the top of the ASA National Rankings at the time of writing.
Next to race was fourteen year old Charlotte Chapman who improved on her programme ranking to take a well earned silver medal in her age group category adding to the medal tally. The last heat saw the fastest girls compete and Monson were represented by Ladies Team Captain, Beth Hathaway (17 years), and Eve Carless (16 years).
Both again swam well paced races with Beth in the hunt for senior medals throughout the entire race. Beth moved comfortably into third place ahead of the chasing swimmers at the halfway stage where she remained until the finish taking bronze in the senior event and her age group (17/18 years) narrowly missing her National Youth qualifying time by a mere 0.66 secs in 9:21.96. Eve came home in 9:44.11 to finish 6th in her age group, 8th junior and 11th senior.
Kim Longland, Director of Swimming at Monson was delighted with the swims commenting “our pacing was first class and I cannot fault the way anyone swam their races, everyone did what I asked them to do and swam the own race according to our plan. Caitlin’s performance was obviously the highlight and she swam a difficult race with a lot of maturity”.