South East Regional Championships Success for Megan

Written by David Begg. Posted in Uncategorized

Three weekends of regional swimming championships began at the K2 in Crawley last weekend with the Age Group Championships. With the new ASA rule changes qualifying has been much tougher this year and in order to gain qualification your times had to be ranked in the top 19 swimmers in the region. There were two swimmers from Isle of Wight Swim Team, Megan King and Abigail Lacey, and four swimmers from West Wight Swimming Club, Grace Poynter, Joseph Franks, Louis Herbert and Eric Tasca. Megan King was the only medallist from the weekend and swam a fantastic personal best in the 14 year olds 50m Backstroke in a time of 32.25sec to gain a silver medal in her first ever regional championships. Megan also made the final in the 50m Freestyle event finishing seventh overall and achieving a new personal best in the heats of 28.95 sec. Megan will hopefully be carrying this form through to the Island Games as she is the youngest selected member of the team.

Also making finals and along the way gaining new personal bests were Joseph Franks and Louis Herbert in the 14 year old boys’ category. Both made the final of the 50m Butterfly and Louis pipped Joseph to record a new personal best time of 29.84 sec to finish sixth while Joseph finished seventh in a new personal best time of 29.91 sec. Louis also competed in the 100m Butterfly event finishing 12th in a new personal best time of 1.08.94sec whilst Joseph competed in the 50m Backstroke event and finished 18th.

Also competing in the boys 14 year old category was Eric Tasca in the 50m Breaststroke who has had a fantastic season to qualify for his first ever South East Regional Championships and once again gained a personal best time of 36.44 sec to finish 14th overall. In the 13 years category both Grace Poynter and Abigail Lacey competed, with Abigail the busiest swimmer over the weekend. Abi made finals in the 200m freestyle, 50m Freestyle and 200m Backstroke events with her best finish 6th in the 50m Freestyle event in a new personal best time of 29.95 sec. Grace competed in the 50m, 100m and 200m breaststroke events with her best result being 11th in the 100m event. The championships continue next weekend at the Mountbatten centre in Portsmouth for the Relay and distance events and then return to Crawley the following weekend for the youth events.