National Age Group Championships 2007

National Medal for Sophie Long

Cleethorpes & Scunthorpe Aquatics swimmers Sophie Long & Tobias Butler both attended their first National Age Group Championships from the 23 rd July to 26 th July at Ponds Forge International Swimming Pool in Sheffield.

Both competing in the 1500 freestyle on the first morning Sophie pulled out the swim of her life to achieve a personal best time by 26 seconds taking her time from 19minute 58 seconds down to 19 minutes 32 seconds and taking the Bronze medal in the 11 year old girls category and ranking her third for her age in the country.

Tobias did not swim quite so well in his only event of the Championships, swimming outside his personal best time but still coming 26 th for his age in the country which is very respectable and hopefully he will improve on this for next year.

After a long day waiting around it was Sophie's turn to swim again in the 200 metres freestyle swimming just outside her personal best but coming in at 23 rd position which was better than where she had qualified for the event (27 th ).

After a long swim down & a good nights rest it was back up at 6.00am for Sophie to swim in the heats of the 800 freestyle. Again she showed her prowess over the distance freestyle events coming in an impressive 10 th which would have made the final had this event not been heated declared winner. She managed to take off 10 seconds from her personal best time taking it from 10 minutes 27 seconds down to 10 minutes 17 secs and improving her overall placing from 17 th where she had qualified for the event.

Chief Coach Nathan Hilton said “We have been working hard all year for this and to come away with a Bronze medal at your first attempt is an amazing achievement. Most swimmers never win a National Medal in their whole swimming career so to get one at such a young age & rank top 10 in the country for the 800 freestyle is a great achievement for Sophie.

This means that we have now won medals at the National Championships 3 out of the last 4 years and even last year when we didn't win any Zach Amin still made finals. This is amazing considering the size of our club compared to some of the larger programmes that we compete against.

Things are only going to get stronger from here too as we have a good crop of younger swimmers coming through the system that will hopefully emulate what Sophie & Zach have achieved over the last 4 years & with the joint team with Scunthorpe going from strength to strength hopefully some of their swimmers will now believe that anything is possible & step up a level.