Four gold and one bronze medal from nine starts was the reward for Royal Tunbridge Wells Monson Swimming Club’s hard working swimmers at the first weekend of the British Gas South East Region Swimming Championships held at the K2 Leisure Centre in Crawley last weekend.

Leading the way was fourteen year old Savanna Jemmett who successfully defended her 100m backstroke title by an impressive 1.2 second margin. Savanna was the fastest qualifier for the final with 1:06.71 a new Personal Best (PB) and new Monson senior club record (CR) before comfortably winning the final.

Earlier in the weekend Savanna had qualified third fastest for the 200m backstroke and was seeking to regain the title she won two years ago. Savanna produced a superb performance in the final, swimming four seconds faster than her heat to win by 2.2 seconds in 2:22.91 another PB and CR to complete her double in the 14 year old backstroke events.

Caitlin Fearon (12 years) also completed a fine double, successfully defending her 400m and 800m Freestyle titles. Caitlin was faced with a difficult task in both events, which were heat declared winner events, as she found herself seeded in the fastest heat with much older, and on paper faster girls.

Caitlin knew what she had to do to win as her competition had swum in earlier heats, and swam very controlled races to win by margins of 2 and 6 seconds respectfully both PB’s and CR’s. Caitlin also made both backstroke finals finishing fifth in the 200m event and seventh in the 100m event. Caitlin is currently placed third at the halfway stage of the BAGCATS’s, Victor Ludorum event with some of her best events still to come.

For the first time in many years Monson entered a team in the girls 11-14 years 400m Medley Relay in an attempt to qualify for the National Championships in July. The Team of Jemmett, Annabel Guye-Johnson, Charlotte Chapman and Fearon put in an exceptional performance and did not disappoint.

Competing against 38 other teams with many of them representing big city clubs Monson found themselves seeded in the fastest heat and 3 seconds in the lead at the halfway stage after fast swims by Jemmett and Guye-Johnson, backstroke and breaststroke specialists respectively.

Charlotte Chapman then had the difficult task of holding off the chasing field, swimming an unfamiliar stroke, which she did well in a PB split. Fearon, a freestyle specialist was then left with the task of bring the team home against girls up to two years older than herself, which she did admirably.

Monson finished a very creditable third to take the bronze medal and now have an agonising wait to see if their time is in the top 40 times nationally across all regional championships to see if they qualify for the summer Nationals.

Thomas Leman (11 years), competing in his first Regional Championships swam a 3 second PB to finish fifteenth in his age group 200m breaststroke. This was all the more pleasing considering that, at the time of the swim, he was still 10 years old and has a very unfortunate birthday for qualification purposes.

Kim Longland, Director of Swimming at Monson was delighted with the weekend’s results, especially the relay commenting: “It was a great performance against some huge clubs with two younger swimmers still eligible next year. It should be good enough to get us to Nationals, which would fantastic.”

“We have a great year so far with four girls having qualified for nineteen events. It would be so good to have Charlotte join them having put in such a great swim on the butterfly leg, which was both difficult and unfamiliar to her – it was a great team effort!”
The Regional Championships resume in two weeks time but in the interim Longland is already planning for better things in the future in his continuing search for more pool time and a sponsor to support the ever improving Monson squad and cater for those who wish to be part of it.

For more information please go to the club web site: www.rtwmonson.org