Royal Tunbridge Wells Monson Swimming Club (Monson) continued their good form at the first full weekend of competition at this year’s Kent County ASA Swimming Championships held at Medway Park last weekend.
From 41 individual starts, Monson amassed 7 Gold, 10 Silver, 2 Bronze medals, a further 17 top six finishes with over 80% of them personal best performances.
There was a fine display from Monson’s emerging young talent, a product of the club’s Academy programme devised to develop local swimmers. The breaststroke events at the weekend were particularly successful for Monson and the youngsters led the way starting with the 50m events.
In the girls 50m breaststroke, Monson was dominant, with Emily Das (10 years), Caitlin Fearon (12 years), Anabel Guye Johnson (13 years) all comfortably winning their age groups, Caitlin and Annabel, who although competing in the thirteen year old age group is in fact still twelve destroyed the field with no thirteen or fourteen year olds finishing near them.
Not to be outdone young Anna Leman (9 years) also narrowly missed the rostrum finishing 5th. Earlier in the weekend Annabel Guye-Johnson gave her older competitors a fright taking silver in the junior 200m Breast and Bronze in the senior event.
The boys responded and contributed to the medal tally with gold for Thomas Leman (10 years) and silver for Callum Ryan (16 years) and a creditable fourth for Sam Fenton (16 years) in the boys/Mens 50m breaststroke.
In the middle distance Freestyle events contested, Caitlin Fearon (12 years) continued her dominance by taking her personal tally of gold’s this year to four in winning the 200m and 400m Freestyle, the latter in a new event best performance, breaking the mark of 2012 Olympian Ellan Gandy. Charlotte Chapman (14 years) also excelled, taking two silvers in her age group events at the same distances. Joshua Harrison (14 years) narrowly missed bronze in the boys 400m Freestyle with a massive 10 second Personal Best (PB).
In the Freestyle Sprint Events 9 year old Kody Bradbury was the star with a well deserved first Kent medal, a bronze, in his age group 50m Freestyle, while Thomas Leman narrowly missed a third medal finishing 4th in his age group. In the 100m Freestyle Joshua Harrison again PB’d to finish 6th and break the magic one minute barrier for the first time.
Monson’s other gold medal performance came from Savanna Jemmet in the girls 14 years 100m backstroke with a determined last 25m to take gold. Just outside her PB. Savannas performance was all the more impressive as she was one of several swimmers who have been suffering from a viral infection.
Ladies team captain, Beth Hathaway (17 years) also medalled on backstroke taking silver in her age group 200m, and 6th place in the senior rankings. Men’s team captain, Callum Ryan also had a profitable weekend taking four silvers in the 16 year old age group 100m and 200m backstroke, and 200 Individual Medley to add to his earlier silver in the breaststroke while younger sister Ella Ryan (11 years) narrowly missed bronze in the 100m backstroke with an impressive 7 second PB.
Monson also fielded very young teams in the Ladies relay events where they finished fourth in the 400m Medley relay (Charlotte Scholes, 13 years; Annabel Guye-Johnson, 12 years; Savanna Jemmet, 14 years; and Beth Hathaway 17 years) and fifth in the freestyle relay with Beth and Savanna being joined by Caitlin Fearon (12 years) and Charlotte Chapman (14 years).
When asked about the teams performances at the weekend a smiling Kim Longland, the Director of swimming at Monson commented:
“There’s not much I can say about the weekend other than I am very proud of the team, the swimmers said it all with their performances in the pool!”
Also competing and achieving PB’s were: Ben Fitzsimmons (12 years), Anthony Bayley (13 years), Simon Newton (13 years), and George Hinton (14 years).
Picture – From left to right the swimmers are (Front) Emily Das, Thomas Leman, Anna Leman, Kody Bradbury and Annabel Guye-Johnson (Back) Savanna Jemmett and Caitlin Fearon.