2005 Oxon and North Bucks County Championships
This weekend saw the best young swimmers in Oxfordshire and North Bucks competing in the third day of the County Championships.
After the long distance events a few weeks ago at Stantonbury Campus, Milton Keynes, the action this weekend has been taking place at Aqua Vale in Aylesbury.
Building on the success of the long distance events, Maxwell Head Coach, Kevin Brooks was looking forward to more top places this weekend.
Just qualifying for the County Championships is a great achievement, but the Maxwell swimmers were determined to do far more than just turn up. Saturday saw an impressive 12 first places with 41 swimmers making it to the top six in their events. Success was evident at all levels within the club. Ed Downes improved his Personal best (pb) by three seconds to win the 200m freestyle. This was particularly impressive as he only set the pb at the Maxwell Open meets in January and is also tapering down his training schedule in preparation for the British Championships later this month. At the other end of the age range, Brooks singled out nine year old Sophie Scott who had a great swim to get a fantastic pb in the 50m breastroke. Her swim of 48.93 seconds gave her a second place in her first championship. Swim of the day for Brooks, however, was in the heats of the 100m freestyle for girls. Hannah Askew’s time of 59.78 seconds places her in the top ten in the country for her age group.
In the girls 100m freestyle, Maxwell gained the top two places in the senior event. Senior County Champion is Laura Beechey with 58.05 seconds, second is Hannah Askew (1 min 00.85 seconds). As Hannah is still a Junior, this means that she is also the Junior County Champion.
Sunday started well with Craig Oliver winning the first event, the 15 years and over 100m freestyle in an impressive time of 55.66 seconds. By the end of the morning session Maxwell swimmers had added another fifteen first places and 41 top six places. By the end of the day, the tally had risen to an amazing thirty three first places fro the day and ninety four top six places. Possibly the most impressive result of the day was the girls Junior 400m relay, where the Maxwell quartet of Hanna Askew, Julie Rampley, Natahsa Mason and Lucy Tucker set a new County record of 4 minutes, 4.92 seconds. With two of the quartet under the age of 14, Maxwell is looking forward to even greater success in this event in the future.
Asked to comment on individual swimmers, Brooks said, ‘Sophie Elgar’s 100m backstroke was brilliant – she lead from the start in a very strong field.’ Brooks singled out nine year old Hope McIntyre for praise, ‘Third place in the 50m fly – in her very first competition – she held it together brilliantly.’
Brooks also commented that the resounding victory of the Mens 4X100m freestyle relay team proved once again that Maxwell have the best group of top class male swimmers in the county.
So with three weekends of the county championships completed Maxwell now have fifty three first places to their credit. Next weekend the championships move to the Temple Cowley pool in Oxford and then they return again to Aquavale in two weeks time.
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