DX swimmers step up and the FAB FOUR move up 9 places.

Today was the start of the British Gas National Age Group Championships 2010.

First in for DX was JAMES LATHAM swam in his first ever nationals swam just shy of his personl best in the 14 years 200m Breaststroke. The speed is looking good for his 100m event and as mentioned later on his awesome relay swims.

EVE FARNSWORTH competing in her first ever individual nationals, was in next in the 13 years 200m Backstroke, Eve rose to the challenge and stepped up at Nationals to swim a Personal Best time by 1.28 seconds to 2.27.45. Eve was ranked 25th going into the Championships swam to 17th position overall.

LUCY WOOD also in her first ever nationals improved on her personal best time with an excellent 2nd 100m in the 13 years 200m Backstroke. Lucy was ranked 16th going into the championship, Lucy swam to a new personal best of 2.25.57 and finished in 11th position just 0.15 seconds outside the final, which means that she is in the top 10 13 year old girls in the country (the winner being from Turkey).

To finish off the first day of competition the Boys had the 4 x 100m Freestyle relay. The Fab Four were ranked 14th in the country after the regional qualifiers, in which they got the Silver medal behind City of Birmingham, the boys saw this as their weakest of the 3 relays. Their goal was to make the final which they did easily qualifying in 7th place. KEVIN WALLBANK led off in a new personal best time of 58.71, followed by our distance supremo BEN GOODALL 59.40, JAMES LATHAM 59.51 and CONNOR SMITH 55.95 to finish in a time of 3.53.57 which is a whopping 5.47 seconds faster. In the post race talk the boys felt that they could all step up and improve their times. With this in mind the boys were in the zone and did just that. KEVIN WALLBANK swam another personal best time to lead off the team in 58.65, BEN GOODALL was second in the pool in a relay split personal best time of 59.22, JAMES LATHAM then swam another relay split pb of 58.49 and CONNOR SMITH anchored the relay to 5th position in a whopping 55.07 seconds to a time of 3.51.43 another 2.14 seconds. The DX boys have improved 7.61 seconds in one day, with all four lads stepping up and improving and improved 9 places from 14th to 5th place. This is testament to their hardwork and team spirit together.

A Big shout out has to go to JOSH BOOTH. Josh goes to school and swims with Millfield Swim Squad and is also a member of Derventio, where he trains during the school holidays. Josh swam a lifetime best of 1.00.83 in the 100m Backstroke in the heats to qualify for the final. Josh then went on to take the 14 years BRONZE MEDAL in a time just off his best in 1.01.00.