Regional Short Course Winter Championships 2023
The first major meet of the season saw swimmers compete at the Winchester leisure centre for the Regional Short Course winter championships. The short course season, running from September to December, is a great way to hone skills and test the development of your progress against some tough competition early on in the season. Many swimmers across the region will be training hard through these competitions with the big aim of qualifying for the short course Winter Nationals later next month.
Lucy Wheeler (13) was up first for Woking in her very first Winter Regional competition. She went in the 50 breaststroke producing a solid 36.81. As she starts her 3 breaststroke events for the weekend Sophie King (17) and Nat Reeve (18) started their busy program with the 50 breaststroke and 100 breaststroke respectively. The two, well experienced at the regional level, began their busy programme of the weekend swimming a total of 7 events over the course of the weekend. Woking was in the middle of some hard training during the championship to really test out their capability. However this did not seem to deter Tegan Gale (15) who started an outstanding weekend with 8 PBs and qualified for her first Winter Nationals, gaining qualification in the 50 free 100 free, 100 IM and 50 fly.
The Men's 50 free saw a heavy contingent of Woking swimmers with Masters swimmers Max Freedman, James Norman, Connor Brunt and Alex Smith producing some solid swims with Alex Smith doing enough to reach the final ranked number 1. Three girls swam soon after in the 100 free with Alex Platt (13) making her first Winter Regionals, hanging on to move up 7 places in the overall ranking with a respectable 1.00.92. Tegan swam well making the final ranked 8th with a PB of over half a second (57.83). Ryan Grealou swam in his solo swim of the weekend with the 100 IM gaining a PB with a 1.05.35.
Sadie Warmington (16) and Abi Elford (15) swam in the 50 fly, both showing a decent performance. Tegan Gale and Sophie King also performed in the 50 fly both managing to make the final ranked 5th and 7th respectively.
Finals from day 1 was an exciting event with multiple Woking swims with Sophie King holding on for 7th on the 50 fly, Tegan improving her position in the 100 free to pick up a Junior Silver medal, while maintaining her 5th in the 50 fly. Alex Smith improved on his time with a 22.63 picking up the Gold medal.
Day 2 starts off with Tegan continuing her PB run with the 200 free, 100 fly and 50 back. Sophie King did enough to make it into the Final of the 100 breaststroke in which she maintains her 7th place.
The afternoon session saw the girls 50 free with Sadie Warmington, Rita Luzan (16), Alex Platt and Tegan Gale all swimming well.
It was a tough weekend for Woking Swimming Club with many struggling to reach their PBs. However, swimmers are currently in the middle of hard trading focusing more on events coming up in future sessions. So for our senior swimmers PBs were never the target. However huge congrats have to go to Tegan Gale who managed three Silver medals in the Junior age group for those aged 15 and below in the 50 free, 100 free and 50 fly.
A huge thanks to our Team Managers who gave up their time to help out at the weekend. The National short course event sees Tegan Gale, Sophie King and Alex Platt qualify, swimming from the 14th Dec - 17th Dec.
