Burnham-On-Sea’s Academy Swim Team swimmers have achieved a great set of results with personal best times at the South West Regional Championships.
The South West Regional Championships took place over three weekends, the first ones being held at Millfield School during April and the last one at Hengrove Leisure Centre last weekend.
The Academy Swim Team had a total of 11 swimmers who had made qualifying times – 55 in total – which was a best result for the club. Swimmers made 14 finals between them.
The first day saw the four competing swimmers making finals – Ryan Smout, Xander Powell, Leo Woodrow and Eleanor Rees. They kept this up through to the final weekend.
The results were: Ryan Smout 12yrs – 6th 50 Fly; Xander Powell 13yrs – 4th 100 Backstroke and 6th 50 Backstroke; Eleanor Rees 14yrs – 5th 50 Breaststroke and 8th  100 Breaststroke; Leo Woodrow 12yrs – 6th 200 Freestyle, 100 Backstroke and 100 Freestyle, 5th 50 Backstroke and 4th 200 Backstroke and 50 Freestyle.
The weekend in Plymouth saw 15-year-olds Zach Powell, Lewis Hay and TT Magang take part in the Youth Championships for the first time. Lewis had personal bests in the 50 Free and 100 Fly and TT in the 50 Free.
Zach was 9th in the 200 Free and 8th in the 400 individual medley. He has recently been added to the Regional distance swimming pathway team.
Secretary Jan Dykes said: “The Academy Swim Team have only 66 swimmers registered to take part in this level of competition and for 11 of them to make it was an incredible achievement.”
Coach Sara Dykes adds: “I am proud of all the swimmers who took part and praise their work ethic and commitment.”
Also, swimming was Lewis Duggan (17) Kelsey Webber (15) Kobe Budd (14) and Phoebe Poole (14), with personal best times between them.
She said that they now await the National rankings to be published to see if anyone had made it through to the Summer Championships in July and August, but there are still competitions before that with many swimmers trying events and distances they had not done before.
She pointed out that Swim England’s philosophy is to encourage swimmers to take part in the longer distance events rather than just doing 50-metre events, and to do other strokes than ones they ‘like’. She pointed out it was her role in the swimming hierarchy to deliver this to the members of the club.
