The change of venue from Margate to Canterbury swimming pool gave us all a few more minutes in bed but it was still an early start. A small but keen bunch of Hythe Aqua swimmers meet at the pool to start their warm-up. For some it was their first experience of open meet or even an outside gala for the club. With this in mind we had three staff on poolside to support the boys and girls.

The change of venue from Margate to Canterbury swimming pool gave us all a few more minutes in bed but it was still an early start. A small but keen bunch of Hythe Aqua swimmers meet at the pool to start their warm-up. For some it was their first experience of open meet or even an outside gala for the club. With this in mind we had three staff on poolside to support the boys and girls.

The star of the day was Sophie Newington who swam her way into 4 finals with some excellent times. In the final she showed her class by winning both the 1996 50m Breaststroke and 50m Freestyle in a convincing way. She followed this by getting silver in the 50m back and bronze in the 50m Butterfly. With her hands full of trophies and some brilliant PBs she made her way home after very successful day.
Zara Brazier continued our success by winning the 1995 50m Back winning by a good margin and narrowly missed gold in the 50m fly having to settle for silver. She was also 1st reserve for the 50m breast (her worst and least favourite stroke!)
The boys (all 2 of them who turned up) were not to be left out of the glory. Ben Walker got a hard fought bronze in the 1995 50m Breast and was 2nd reserve for both the 50m Back and Fly finals. Daniel Burch had some fine swims recording impressive PBs and was unlucky not to get 3rd in the 1995 50m Fly narrowly coming 4th but with the consolation of an even better PB.

Overall it was a pretty successful day for Hythe swimmers with lots of PBs and some strong swims. Our youngest swimmers Jodie Cowie and Jessica Saunders showed a lot of confidence in their swims and achieved some good PBs and overall despite their nerves had a good time. In the 1996 age group Esther Evans and Megan Rhys-Challis swam well with Esther getting 3 PBs and Megan 1. Katie Levitt swam her way to 3 PBs and Charlotte Cowie showed her strength in all events by finishing a lot higher up rankings than she started. Jessica Fell and Hannah Bacon in the 1994 age group both swam hard to get new PBs and Hannah swam herself close to a final place. Hayley Newman only did one race (not surprising really after getting to bed at 2am after her sister’s 21st birthday party!) but also improved on her PB.

Thank you to Kevin Brazier, Jim Burch and Kim Walker for helping on poolside and to Eddie Willis for officiating and supporting us.
It was a long, hot but enjoyable day and it was nice to see new swimmers representing Hythe. The Margate Open is a good event for any swimmer wanting to gain experience to do.

SO LETS HAVE MORE ENTRIES NEXT YEAR PLEASE ESPECIALLY BOYS