Royal Tunbridge Wells Monson Swimming Clubs’ Annabel Guye-Johnson (12 years) secured her second National Qualifying Time (NQT) by a comfortable margin at last weekend’s Level 1 ‘Spring Open Meet’ hosted by Crawley Swimming Club at K2 Crawley.
Competing against girls almost 2 years older than her in the 12-13 year old 100m Breaststroke, Annabel finished fourth in 1:20.90 to comfortably achieve her second NQT by over a second adding to the 200m time she achieved in Norwich a fortnight ago. Annabel also finished fourth in the 200m event at Crawley just outside her personal best (PB).
Qualification means Annabel will join the nation’s elite in competing at this summer’s ASA National Age Group Championships to be held at Ponds Forge Sheffield at the end of July.
Team mate Savanna Jemmett (13 years) was also in pursuit of NQT’s and having experienced the National Championships last year is very keen to go back. Unfortunately Savanna was not quite as lucky as Annabel and agonisingly just missed her 100m Backstroke NQT by a mere 0.2 of a second on this occasion, albeit she still has several opportunities left to qualify.
Savanna did however take the Silver medal in the 12-13 age group 100m Backstroke and Bronze in the 200m event as consolation. Freestyle specialist Caitlin Fearon (11 years), who despite being one of the best eleven year olds in the country must qualify for Nationals as a twelve year old if she is to go, focussed at Crawley on Breaststroke and Individual Medley (IM) and was rewarded for efforts with two Silvers in the 100m Breaststroke and 200 IM.
Also competing at Crawley were team mates: Callum Ryan (15 years); Sam Fenton (15 Years); Rosie Fenton (12 Years) and Lucianne Sarson (17 Years).
Director of Swimming, Kim Longland said “I am pleased that NQT’s are being achieved so early in the season with the Regional Championships and several Open Meets still to go which takes eases the pressure and means we can focus on the Nationals’ ”
He also commented “I’m especially pleased with Annabel’s as she is almost a year out of age. Savanna has been working hard in recent weeks and I have seen an upturn in her performances and am optimistic she will continue improving over the next few weeks.”
At the same time as the ‘Crawley Spring Meet’ a small group also travelled to Medway Park to compete in the Level 3 ‘Black Lion Spring Open’.
George Hinton (13 Years) reaped the benefits of a recent increase in his training with several substantial PB’s and Gold in all three Backstroke events (50m, 100m and 200m) George also took Silvers in both the 50m and 100m Freestyle and third in the 50m Butterfly.
Josh Harrison (14 Years) also made the podium finishing third in the 200m Freestyle. Also competing at Medway Park was: Mia Burns (10 Years; and brothers Jonathan and Mathew Chadwick. RTWM will next be in action at next weekend’s South East Regional Youth Championships to be held at K2 Crawley over the Bank Holiday weekend.
Anyone interested in the clubs activities should visit the club web site at www.rtwmonson.org.