ONB County Championships 2025
ONB County Championships 2025
Bourne End had a very successful County Championships 2025. The racing took place over five weekends in January and February. We were represented by boys and girls relay teams plus seven swimmers who qualified for individual events this year.
Relays
This year, for the first time in a number of years, we entered teams for the 10-12 and 13/14 age group relays. The races took place at Leys swimming pool in Oxford. The racing was fast and loud, but good fun!
First up were the boys with our 10-12 team consisting of Joseph Madden, Charlie Sands, Will Roberts and Henry Lawrence, and our 13/14 year-olds were Jai Nursey, Abel Goodall, Oliver Rendall and Myles Schofield. Both teams swam well and lots of lessons were learnt. For many of our swimmers this was their first experience of a meet like this, and they will definitely be back stronger next year.
Next up was the girls’ turn. Our teams were Darcey Breed, Chloe Brown, Arwen Ayres and Megan Saunders for the 10-12s and Siri Vijapur, Eleithyia O’Connor, Hollie Roberts and Amelie Allen for the 13/14 year-olds. The younger girls were our best performing team finishing 16th and 18th in their relays, with the older girls finishing 22nd and 24th. Again, both teams were relatively inexperienced and did extremely well representing the club.
Main Championships
The main championships took place at Aquavale in Aylesbury over two weekends in February. Seven of our swimmers took part; Oliver Rendall, Hollie Roberts, Arwen Ayres, Megan Saunders, Darcey Breed, Zalie Murray and Joseph Madden.
I and the rest of the coaching team are extremely proud of all of our swimmers. They all behaved beautifully and every single one of them swam personal best times in their events – some by significant amounts. Not everything went to plan for everyone, but all setbacks were handled maturely and will be learnt from. We can’t ask for more than that from them!
We had two swimmers make finals – Oliver Rendall qualified for a fantastic six finals (100 Butterfly, 50 Freestyle, 50 Breaststroke, 100 Breaststroke, 50 Butterfly and 100 Freestyle) and secured a gutsy 3rd place in an extremely close 50 Freestyle final. Hollie Roberts qualified for two finals – 50 Backstroke and 100 Butterfly swimming well in both finals.
Counties is the highest level of competition that most of our swimmers will take part in and something for everyone in the club to aspire to. Full results can be found here.
Well done to all of our swimmers!
Thank you also to our officials who gave up their time to help at the meets – Ed Ayres, Chris O’Connell, Daniel Hawkins and Helen Fisher.
