Three Kelly swimmers break British Senior Records

3rd/4th March 2007

Three Kelly College Junior Disability swimmers, David Hill, Louise Watkin and Sarah Timms between them broke 3 Senior British Records at this weekend's DSE National Junior Championships at the Ponds Forge pool in Sheffield . The swimmers enjoyed a fantastic two days of competition, where teams from all over Europe were in attendance for this Open National Championships. The trio between them managed to win a staggering 19 Gold and 5 silver medals, during the intensive two days of racing.

It was David Hill's last Junior Championships which is open to under 18's swimmers. His aim for the weekend was to set British Junior Championship records to stand for the future and he was not disappointed, setting 5 new Junior records and a Senior Short Course British Record in the 50m Fly. It was a busy time for David who never seemed to be out of the pool as he entered all 11 events open to him on the programme. David gained 7 personal best times and won 8 gold and 3 silver medals.

Louise Watkin had a super weekend also winning 8 gold medals, 5 of which were in new personal best times. Louise swam a spectacular race in the 400m Freestyle and set new British Senior short course record by an amazing 19 seconds, Louise swam away from the field right from the start and even managed to make the second 200m of the race faster than the first. 14 year old Louise, has been classified as an arm amputee, gained a Silver medal in the 4x100 Medley relay at the IPC World Swimming Championships in Durban during November. Since returning from the World's Louise's has been showing great improvement in all her events and has several more years in this championship event as Junior.

Sarah Timms who is coach by Martyn Stacey since joining Kelly College also had a tremendous competition breaking the British Senior Short course in the 200m IM. She also won 3 gold, 2 silver medals and recorded personal best times in nearly all of her events.

Director of Swimming Robin Brew said this was a great weekend for our swimmers and a good measure against Britain 's and Europe 's best Junior's. However, my sights for the swimmers will be in 18 months time against when we pitch ourselves against the best in the world at the Paralympic games in Beijing . It was good for me to study the swimmers performances over the two days and will use the information gathered to work on areas that we can make even further improvements.