Royal Tunbridge Wells Monson (RTWM) Swimming Club swimmers signed off in style at the final sessions of the South East Regional
British Gas Age Group Championships held at K2 Crawley last weekend.

The weekend concluded this year’s cycle of Championships, which has seen RTWM win no less than 8 Gold, 3 Silver and 3 Bronze medals across Senior, Junior Youth and Age Group Championships and has resulted 4 swimmers qualifying for this year’s National
Championships on a number of events.

Caitlin Fearon (11 years) went into the weekend leading the BAGACAT points table, which is an age group Victor Ludorum event to find the best all round swimmer across all strokes and distances. Defending a lead of 102 points she knew it would be tight as a couple of her rivals had their best events to come. The job was made more difficult by the fact that where there were finals fast times needed to be achieved in the heats as that is where the BAGCAT points were awarded.

Caitlin re-opened her account in the first session on the Saturday morning with the 200m Freestyle. Setting a blistering pace Caitlin was on target for a South Eastern Regional Record for most of the race. Caitlin’s time of 2:16.59 improved on her ‘distance’ Freestyle BAGCAT scores to extend her lead by another 10 points and was also a National Qualifying time (NQT) for the 11/12 year old age group at this summer’s Nationals making her one of only two 11 year olds to have achieved the standard this year.

Caitlin then went on to win the final in slower time but still by by a comfortable 3 second margin.

In the second session of the day Caitlin took Bronze in the 400m Individual Medley, a Heat Declared Winner (HDW) event, with a large Personal Best (PB). Despite this and with other swimmers having now scored in their preferred events her lead had been cut to a mere 3 points.

The first session on Sunday morning was clearly going to be the decider with three girls still in serious contention and all with an opportunity to improve on their ‘medley’ scores. Caitlin produced a superb swim to set the fastest time and improve her score by 10 points.

The final followed 15 minutes after and a very tired Caitlin battled to Silver, albeit her heat time would have won gold by over half a second. With only the 100 Backstroke to go in the final session and all contenders having swum their main events it was clear Caitlin had secured the South East Regional BAGCATS crown to add to the Kent title she won in March with 2098 points, just 13 points ahead of Flora Chung of Guildford City and was presented with her winners Salver by Kent Count ASA President Shelly Robinson.

Team mate Savanna Jemmett (13 years) was also in action in the 100m Backstroke looking for her NQT to add to the 200m time she achieved two weeks ago. Savanna attacked from the start and comfortably qualified in 1:08.77, a time that was also inside the 14 year old time and a new RTWM Club Age Group and Junior record. Savanna then had a nervous wait to see what times were posted in latter heats to establish her final position, as this was a HDW, She did not have to wait long to discover she had taken Gold, winning by 1.67 secs to add to her Bronze in the 200m event.

Annabele Guye-Johnson (12 years) went close to Backstroker Savanna Jemmett in action medaling in the 100m Breaststroke, and again went through this time narrowly missing Silver and Bronze. The ever improving Charlotte Chapman settled for 4 of a good inside the NQT but had to also rounded Participation Perfection Performance campaign with large PB’s in the 200m Freestyle and 200m and 400m Individual Medley events.

In the Freestyle she qualified for the final and finished a very creditable 7th. Charlotte also finished 16th in her BAGCAT Age Group event. George Hinton (13 years) was competing in his first Regional Championships and finished 24th in the 200m Backstroke establishing a new Long Course PB.

RTWM swimmers will now be focussing on this Summers Nationals to be held at Ponds Forge in Sheffield at the end of July where the following will be competing: Beth Hathaway (15/16 years) 50m, 100m and 200m Freestyle; Savanna Jemmett (13 years) 100m and 200m Backstroke; Annabel Guye-Johnson (12 years) 100m and 200m Breaststroke and Caitlin Fearon (11/12 years) 200m Freestyle.

Annabel and Beth also travel to Wales this coming weekend for the Cardiff International and Beth will be representing the South East at the English Schools Swimming Association Championships two weeks later in Liverpool.