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CASA SWIMMER & COACH SELECTED FOR REGIONAL TALENT DEVELOPMENT CAMPS

Cleethorpes & Scunthorpe Aquatics swimmer Leah Altoft & Coach Nathan Hilton have both been recently selected to attend the newly introduced Regional Talent Development training camps.

This involves attending 3 one day training camps the first of which was on Sunday 16 th September in County Durham, the second one will be held at the new Leeds swimming centre on the 6 th January 2008 and the third one to be held in Sunderland on 30 th March 2008.

Selection for these training camps was determined from the results at National Age Group Championships held back in late July at Ponds Forge in Sheffield. There were only 24 places up for grabs so competition was fierce as it covers the whole of the North East region which is as far up as Newcastle & as wide as Sheffield so is a massive area. Leah managed to show great determination in her swims and impressed the talent development coaches to secure her selection to the programme.

These camps are the follow up to the old World Class Start system which has now been disbanded with each individual region managing there own group of exceptionally talented athletes as opposed to the scheme being run on a National scale.

Coach Nathan Hilton said “the idea behind these training camps and programmes is to give these kids the skills to succeed on an International level and with the home Olympics coming up in 2012 it is of utmost importance that the systems are in place for these swimmers to have the best chance of success.

The swimmers had to be 12 & over to be selected onto the camps or we could have had 2 swimmers on the programme as Sophie Long won a Bronze Medal at Nationals on the 1500 free & came 10 th on the 800 free but was still only 11 so was not eligible for selection to the programme.

Overall this is a testament to the hard work and dedication that the swimmers are putting in and they are now getting some excellent results from there efforts. These places were hard to come by and it cannot be underestimated how important it is for Leah, myself and all the other swimmers in our programme to have this opportunity to move to the next level.”