RTW Monson reign at Regionals

Last month saw a team of RTW Monson’s junior swimmers compete at the South East Regional Championships held at the K2 Centre, Crawley and Winchester City pool. The South East region is the largest of all the seven regions, spanning from Jersey to Milton Keynes, making it a huge achievement to even gain qualification into this event. 

The weekend got off to a flying start with the 200m Butterfly event, which saw Elsie Saffer and Mae Davies both bring home personal best times at their first ever regional event. Bella Jones put in a sterling performance in the distance freestyle, swimming both the 800m and 1500m races. The boys were represented by Jasper Yau, Oleksandr Mialkovskyi and Jax Marshall in the distance events, who all put in great swims over these challenging races. Special mention must go to 11-year old Jax, who qualified as Monson’s youngest swimmer, racing a year early in the 12 year old and under category.

Next, the Monson swimmers displayed their strengths over all four strokes in the 200m Individual Medley event. Julia Elvidge, Lowri Williams, Zoe Tollit and Bella Jones all made the final with Bella walking away with a silver medal. Rohan Bissett, Jasper Yau, Julia Elvidge , Lowri Williams and Zoe Tollit all swam an impressive 400 Individual Medley, which saw Jasper finish in a commendable fourth place and Julia storming down the pool to finish in second, clocking up a huge personal best time.

Backstroke and breaststroke proved to be the most successful strokes for Monson at this year’s regional meet, with Julia Elvidge claiming the gold medal in all three Backstroke events in the 13 year old category for 50m, 100m and 200m. Nel Dziki also made her first regional final, finishing in sixth place with a personal best time. And first-time finalist Rohan Bissett swam in the 14 years age group, qualifying amongst an extremely competitive field in the 200m and 100m backstroke, posting fantastic times. Phoenix Clary and Elsie Saffer also made their debut in backstroke finals at regional level, both swimming very close and exciting races, with Elsie finishing in fourth position.

The girls breaststrokers were out in force, with Monson taking four of the eight spots in the 13-year olds’ final. Olivia Cooley, Mae Davies, Lowri Williams and Zoe Tollit all battled to reach the wall first, with Lowri Williams finishing in second place. The 50m and 100m racing proved to be very successful too, with Williams this time coming away with a first place finish and regional champion and Zoe finishing extremely strongly in third place to add another medal to the Monson haul.

Bella Jones finished off a busy two weeks of races, which had seen her compete in all distances of the freestyle, with the 50m Freestyle - known as the splash and dash. Bella finished with another silver medal to add to her collection and a new personal best time.

Coach, Karen Bradbury, said that it had been an incredibly long but very rewarding two weekends of racing. “Our youngest swimmers experienced a step up in competition at regional level and showed real confidence and determination throughout the event. The smiles and sense of accomplishment from the swimmers was very rewarding to see. We now will be waiting for the National Qualifying window to close on 12th May to see if some of the swimmers have managed to gain qualification into this year’s British and English Summer National Championships.”