Backstroke specialist Savanna Jemmett of Royal Tunbridge Wells Monson Swimming Club (Monson) continued where she left of the previous week with some outstanding performances at last weekend’s ASA Zonal meet held at the K2 Leisure Centre in Crawley, Sussex.
The Zonal meet attracts the cream of swimmers from as far north as Milton Keynes and as far west as Cornwall and incorporates three of the eight ASA Regions.
Savanna opened her account with a Personal Best (PB) in the heat of the 200m Backstroke for girls aged 14 and under. Qualifying fastest for the final Savanna swam a very well paced race to comfortably win by a full second and establish new Monson Senior and Junior Club marks.
On the second day of competition Savanna also qualified fastest for the final of the 100m Backstroke, but paid the price for a poor start & turn trailing in fourth place at the turn over a second behind the two leaders. A powerful second length brought her back in contention, and she narrowly missed the silver by a mere 0.05 of a second, adding bronze to her earlier Gold.
Later in the afternoon she contested the 50m Backstroke qualifying second fastest this time and held her position in the final, 0.21 secs behind the winner, to take the Silver and complete her set.
Annabel Guye-Johnson (12 years) was also competing in the same age group and gave her older competitors a run for their money qualifying for the 50m and 100m Breaststroke finals, the only twelve year old to do so. More importantly Annabel’s times in both events were both inside the qualifying standards set by British Swimming for 12 and 13 year olds for this year’s British Gas International Swimming Meet to be held at the John Charles Centre for Sport in Leeds at the beginning of March.
Annabel’s 50m time was also a new Monson Senior mark and she currently ranks second fastest Monson 100m and 200m Breaststroker on Monson’s all time list, second only to former Olympian Suki Brownsdon.
Caitlin Fearon (12 years) also competed out of age qualifying for both the 200m and 400m Freestyle Finals swimming long course PB’s in both. Also competing were Beth Hathaway (17 years) and Callum Ryan (16 years), Beth qualifying for the 100m & 400m finals.
“A full set of medals, two qualifying times for Leeds and 10 swims inside National Qualifying times is pleasing” said Monson Director of Swimming Kim Longland, “however I have been trying to delay an impending training adaptation that I knew was due and unfortunately the weather and exams have not been kind to us this week enforcing rest with the result of a slightly early adaptation process, which affected our older swimmers most.”
Monson now look forward to the beginning of this year’s Kent County ASA Championships which begin in just under three weeks time.