SOUTHWOLD Swimming Club members did both their club and their county proud at the South West Counties Youth Championships which took place in Plymouth recently.

The strength of the achievement by the small group of swimmers, who have their base at Yate Leisure Centre, could be seen as they did well in having to take on the might of far bigger performance centres from around the country like those from home city Plymouth Leander along with Millfield School, Mount Kelly, Aqua Sulis, Bournemouth Colligates to name a few of them at the year’s ASA South West Youth Championships.

The great performances came from the team as a whole but there were some particularly great displays and results by individuals.

Outstanding racing saw Georgie Locke (15), Emily Locke (16) Jessica Shaw (17), Maria Jones (16), Arno Turner (14), Henry Bennett (15), Ben Rawlins (15) and Peter Lewis (20) all swimming to good personal best times in their selected events with the club’s most improved junior, Georgie Locke, making it through to no less than six finals which culminated in her getting a fabulous fourth place in the sprint event of the breaststroke disc which is the 50m breaststroke.

Other finalists were Henry, with two finals, and Maria with one.

The pick of the racing had to be the head-to-heads between our county champion Jessica Shaw (17) and the current National champion Bethany Newton (17) from the Street and District Club.

Both girls qualified the fastest in the 50m and 100m backstrokes so were in the pole position lanes of four and five for the finals.

Jessica has been working hard on her starts and underwater phases and got away well to match the national champions over the first 15m of the race.

But with real grit and determination, she dug in to be ahead leading into the final 20m and this time held good pace and power to never look like losing either race.

Afterwards Jessica said: “I could see and feel she was right up with me and expected her at some point to pull away.”

Jessica’s two backstroke wins plus second places in the 50m breaststroke and 100m freestroke should secure her selection at this year’s National Summer Championships which will take place in Sheffield.

She was also selected by the ASA South West to represent the region at the ‘Golden Bear’ International Event, Zagreb, Croatia in June.

And that will be a contest to remember for the Southwold club ace when it all happens in a few weeks’ time.