The Winter NER short course competition was held in Sunderland last weekend.  Thirteen Armthorpe swimmers headed north to compete with the best from clubs such as Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle and Sunderland. The age group and youth/senior competitions are held simultaneously in each side of a boomed 50 metre pool.  Those of you who have been to Ponds Forge – imagine the pool split as a 25metre pool with races happening in each end.  Two lots of officials, starts, judges and referees and coaches trying to keep an eye on what’s happening in both pools and you can see it proves to be an incredibly busy weekend.  This year there were no problems with swimmers thinking their race had started when it was the other race, but we did have all the lights go out during one event.  The senior end of the pool kept swimming as if nothing had happened but the little 10 year old girls on their 100 breast event were a little more surprised!

The weekend proved very successful for Armthorpe swimmers with a total of 18 medals won (3 gold, 7 silver, 8 bronze).  In addition to this, we have 2 new swimmers achieve a sub 60 time for the 100m Freestyle – Simon Kliment with a 58.21 and Georgia Wright with a 59.63 – fantastic achievement from both – Well done!

Age Group

Age group events are 10-13 years for girls and 10-14 years for boys and are swum as heat declared winner.  Top 10 (finalist) positions are mentioned below.

Of note Simon Kliment achieved 2 golds, 2 silvers and 3 bronze medals and Ben Wright achieved 4 silvers.

Simon Kliment:

100 Free 5^th         200IM 2^nd                   100 Back 2^nd            200 Fly 1^st             400IM 3^rd                    200 Free 3^rd

200 Back 1^st              100 Fly 4^th

Harvey Williamson:

100 Back 5^th             200 Free 8^th             200 Back 7^th         400 Free 4^th

Charlotte Howard:

400IM 8^th                    200 Free 8^th             200 Back 6^th             400 Free 3^rd             100 Back 3^rd             200 Fly 8^th

Tilly Arrand:

400IM 9^th                    800 Free 9^th

Ben Wright:

100 Free 2^nd            200IM 7^th                    100 Back 2^nd            200 Free 2^nd            200 Back 2^nd        400 Free 3^rd

Lucy Clarke:

400 Free 8^th             800 Free 4^th             200 Fly 9^th

Chantelle Waugh:

400 Free  10^th

Other age group swimmers competing: Lauren Christmas

Junior and Senior

Junior and Senior events are swum together with the top 10 combined reaching the final.  Juniors are 14 and 15 year old girls and 15 year old boys.  As usual Jarvis Parkinson pulled some fantastic swims out of the bag reaching 6 finals and achieving 3 medals.  Georgia Wright also pulled some fantastic PBs out on all her freestyle swims and achieved bronze in 400 and 800 freestyle.  The Junior and Senior program is incredibly tough with heats for 50, 100 and 200 in all events, plus 400 and 800/1500 free and 200 and 400IM swum over just 2 sessions.  Those who have qualified for multiple events need to be incredibly disciplined with warm-ups, swim downs and nutrition over the weekend in order to ensure they are race ready for all events.  Add finals in to the mix and it becomes a gruelling weekend with over 20,000metres of swimming for some of our top athletes (with warm up and swim downs) .

Results below are for top 10 finishes in either Junior or Senior:

Jarvis Parkinson:

100 Free 4^th         200 Fly 3^rd            200 Breast  1^st    200 Free 4^th         200IM 4^th             200 Back 2^nd

Georgia Wright:

200 Free 6^th             400 Free 3^rd        800 free 3^rd

Heidi Smith and Natasha Crow and Lauren Christmas also swam in multiple events.