Dedication pays off for young members of Hinckley Hornets
COMPETITIVE swimming is not the easiest sport for any youngster with many hours and metres in the pool, not to mention the 4am starts.
But that dedication has really paid off for six Hinckley swimmers who qualified for the recent British and English summer championships. The competitions are for the fastest swimmers in the country and to even qualify is a fantastic achievement.
Hinckley Hornets had six swimmers qualify, who all learnt to swim at the old Hinckley Leisure Centre. Carys O’Reilly, Joel Weston, Kieran Bott and Joshua Munroe who have risen through the ranks from Hinckley and train with City of Leicester but still also represent Hinckley in competitions and Isabel Dean and Isaac Peace all competed in events at the Ponds Forge Arena in Sheffield.
Qualifying for the most events in the British champs was St Martin’s pupil, Carys O’Reilly who swam in five events, making the finals of the 400-metre individual medley and 100-metre breaststroke.
It was though in the 200-metre Breaststroke where her main hopes lay as she qualified for the final with the fastest time in the heat for the final.
Carys went out hard and was leading at the halfway point, but just managed to be pipped for first but was still delighted to get her first British championship medal.
Joel Weston, despite being 16 at the time of the event, had to qualify for the 18 and under age group due to his date of birth which meant he was up against swimmers who were nearly two years older than him. Despite the age difference Joel managed to get in the gruelling 200-metre butterfly final.
Completing the race in a time of two minutes and six seconds, Joel knows he will be in with a chance of a medal in 2018 as he will still be racing in the same age group.
Kieran Bott went into the champs probably being told this one was for experience. He went in to the heats with the 21st fastest front crawl time in his age group but somehow managed to race a fantastic heat and made the final and then managed to beat his heat time in the evening final.
Kieran also made the 100-metre front crawl final in the English champs and just missed out on a medal by a quarter of a second.
Redmoor pupil Isabel Dean was in action in a number of events under the S10 class in the English Summer Champs.
Isabel had a gruelling schedule as she managed to qualify for six events, managing personal best performances in the 50, 100 and 400-metre front crawl and 100-metre breaststroke races.
Despite having an injury hit season, sprinter Josh Munroe managed to still get a spot in the 50-metre butterfly heats, just missing out on a finals spot by 0.25 of a second and one place, but still managing to swim the equivalent of two lengths butterfly of Hinckley pool in 27 seconds.
Another swimmer who had to cut his training schedule was Isaac Peace who has spent a large part of the year studying for his A levels at Hinckley Academy.
Isaac who can be seen spending many an hour training in the public sessions ay Hinckley qualified for the most gruelling event of them all, the 400m Individual Medley and did not disappoint coming in 13th overall.
Overall it was a great championships by Hinckley swimmers and we are hoping for more qualifiers next year. If you are interestedd in competitive swimming or water polo please see our website www.hinckleyswimmingclub.co.uk