Another fantastic weekend at the County Championships!
Members of Shepshed were back in action at Loughborough University this weekend. The lads kicked off the weekend with the 100mFC on Saturday evening, and a great start it was! Jake Spicer started with a 3second PB, getting 9th place in his age group! Mark Crook Rumsey and Matt Wright followed in the penultimate heat, Mark just 0.5secs off his best, and just missing the final as 2nd reserve, getting 10th in his age group, and Matt knocked 1.5secs off his PB, getting him a place in the final, 7th place in his age group and overall in the final. Eleanor Hopewell followed in the girls 200IM swimming it for the first time in fantastic style.
The swimmers returned on Sunday, this time starting off with the 100m fly. Jake was up first again with a 23second PB and missing his Midlands time by just 2 seconds and coming 3rd in his age group! Matt and Mark followed in the final heat, and both qualified into the final and qualified for the District Championships. Mark had a great swim, knocking a second off his PB and came 2nd in his age group, 3rd overall. Matt followed with possibly his most frustrating swim ever! Having knocked half a second off his PB in the heat, he knock a further second off in the final, getting under the minute (long course) for the first time…and missing his NATIONAL time by just 0.1second!!!!!!!!! This is a fantastic achievement for Matt, and is the closest he has come to qualifying for the nationals before, he will have another chance at the Midlands in May, and hopefully he will be able to find that extra 0.1second and represent Shepshed at the national championships in August! That said, Matt won his age group and came 2nd overall in the final!Eleanor was back in action in the 100mBK with a 4 second PB! Blake Russell then swam in his first ever 200m at the COunty Championships with a great swim in the 200m FC, smashing his entry time and coming 9th in his age group! Jake was back in the water next, and it was to be a day of missing qualifying times by a finger-nail as Jake took 3seconds off his PB, missing his Midlands time by just 0.85! Jake came 8th in his age group. Mark finished off the 200m FC, knocking 7seconds off his PB and coming 6th in his age group! Catherine McGeown made her debut performance in the County CHampionships next, not picking an easy event to start off, but the 800m FC!!! Catherine did a great job in the gruelling event, gaining a lot of experience along the way and a silver medal for coming 2nd in her age group! Well done Catherine!
The girls started off the final session of the weekend with the 100m Fly. Eleanor started, swimming the event for the first time and setting a great time, despite taking in some water half way down her 2nd length and coming 6th in her age group! Demi Exon followed, again swimming the event for the first time, also setting a great time despite being under the weather coming 7th in her age group! Jake was back again in the 100m BK in the next event, taking 4seconds off his PB and coming 8th in his age group! Matt followed in the penultimate heat, taking 3 seconds off his PB, missing his MIdlands time by just 2 seconds, coming 2nd in his age group and qualifying for the final! Natasha McLoughlin was back in action again this weekend in the 200mFC with another great swim, also smashing her entry time. Eleanor was back in the pool nex, keeping up her standards knocking another 5 seconds off her PB. Catherine then swam in her second event, getting under 3minutes and knocking 14seconds from her time trial time and coming 8th in her age group! Alice Cowley finished off the event, knocking 4 seconds off her PB (10seconds faster than she swam last year!) and coming 6th in her age group! Finally Jake swam his last event in the first heat of the 400IM. Taking the lead, Jake had a great swim, again just missing his Midlands time by 7seconds! Unfortunatly, following Jakes swim, a meeting was called as the amount of chlorine had fallen to 0, and the decision had to be made to postpone the rest of the events (the last 2 heats of the 400IM as well as the 4 x 100m finals) for the safety of the swimmers. These events will be re-arranged an included in next weekends final, meaning Matt has a nice rest before his 100m BK final…plenty of rest to get his Midlands I reckon! 
Well done to all swimmers this weekend. Another great weekend of swimming, just one more to go!
Suzi
**BAGCAT update:
Jake Spicer: 9th
Eleanor Hopwell: 11th
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