British Championships Review

Repton Swimming recently featured strongly at the British Swimming Championships, the pinnacle swimming event in Great Britain. The championships were held at the Ponds Forge International Sports Centre in Sheffield, between 4^th-9^th April 2023.

In recent years this event has had Junior Qualifying Times, but this year it was just an open qualifying process that our young swimmers had to achieve. We are proud to say that we had a total 20 swimmers qualify for the Championships, of which 15 are full time Repton swimmers and 5 are overseas distance members who represent Repton Swimming as their UK home club.

Our swimmers more than held their own against the best swimmers in the country and more often than not, were racing in Heats and Finals against swimmers from some of the top Universities and National Performance Centres; it was amazing to see our swimmers competing against the best.

Huge progressions have been made by our swimmers and this resulted in a total of 31 finals, with 30 event personal bests throughout the meet.

Highlights include:

• Lydia Cordle (Age 12) made the 400m IM Final – the youngest finalist at the championships
• Laurie Devine achieved a Consideration Time (50m Free) for Great Britain for the European Junior Championships
• Hannah Bowley achieved a Consideration Time (200m Breaststroke) for Great Britain for the European Junior Championships
• Laurie Devine achieved 3 Consideration Times for Scotland for the Commonwealth Youth Games
• Holly Marshall achieved a Consideration Time for Wales for the Commonwealth Youth Games
• Hannah Bowley, Lucy Hitchin, Holly Robinson, Hettie D’Ammassa all achieved CT’s for England for the Commonwealth Youth Games
• Lewis Burras (overseas distance member) was selected for the Great Britain Team for the World Championships in Japan after winning the 100m Freestyle.

Director of Swimming Ash Morris was very happy with our progress; “This was a very positive championships for us, highlighting the big progressions made for our swimmers. We are now competing with the best in country and putting Repton Swimming on the map for National success. These positive performances from our swimmers are now starting to be rewarded with some International team selections, which is huge for our swimmers and the programme that we have. I was particularly impressed that our swimmers were able to step up in finals, enjoy their racing and learn from their heat swims – these are all positive signs of our coaching process here at Repton Swimming”

Congratulations to our swimmers and our coaching team for such a positive set of outcomes.

Full results of the meet can be found here: British Swimming Championships 2023 - SPORTSYSTEMS Meet Results Service

All sessions from the Championships can be seen on British Swimming’s YouTube channel: (103) BritishSwimming - YouTube