Sixteen year old Beth Hathaway powered her way to gold in the 15/16 year 200m Freestyle at last weekend’s South East Regional British Gas Youth Championships held at K2 Crawley.

Competing against the cream of the South East of England, Freestyle specialist, Beth from the Royal Tunbridge Wells Monson Swimming Club led from start to finish wining in a time of 2:10.08.

The previous day Beth had narrowly missed winning the 100m event by a mere 0.05 of a second and had to settle for silver.

Beth, a pupil at the Weald of Kent Grammar School for Girls, has also been selected to represent the South East Regional Schools team in the 100m and 200m Freestyle at this year’s English School Swimming Association Championships to be held in Liverpool at the beginning of July three weeks before competing at the ASA National Youth Championships at Pons Forge in Sheffield.

Commenting on Beth’s Performances at the weekend, Director of Swimming at RTWM, Kim Longland commented “I was very pleased with the way Beth approached this weekend. Beth is very tired at present and is showing great maturity; she has coped well with a troubled year dogged by illness and injury but is working hard at rebuilding her aerobic base and is now laying down a good foundation to attain full fitness and hopefully perform well at this summer’s Nationals.

“Additionally she is in her GCSE year at school and is working extremely hard at her academic studies, so this weekend was a bonus”.

Team mate Eve Carless (16 years) was not to be left out of the action and qualified for her first Regional final and joined Beth in the 200m final to finish 5th, establishing a new Personal Best time (PB) by a full second to add to earlier Long Course PB’s achieved in the 100m and 400m Freestyle events.

Representing the boys, Callum Ryan (15 years) also had an outstanding weekend establish a new PB in the 1500m Freestyle by a massive 11 seconds and narrowly missing the long standing club record of former RTWM star Jonathan Bone.

Callum also achieved Long Course PB’s in the 100m Freestyle, 200m Backstroke and 400m Individual Medley events. Also competing at the Championships for RTWM was Lucianne Sarson.

RTWM will next be in action at next weekend’s Beckenham International to be held at the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre next weekend.

Anyone interested in the clubs activities should visit the club web site at www.rtwmonson.org.