News

The good form of the swimmers of Warrender Baths Club continued in 2007 after the Edinburgh team won the Top Club award for the second year in succession at the Scottish National Age Group Championships, held last week (12-15 April 2007) at Glasgow’s Toll Cross pool.

The team competition proved to be extremely exciting with Warrender always in contention as the lead changed several times throughout the four days between themselves, City of Glasgow, City of Aberdeen and ’s Portsmouth Northsea.  With just one event to go on the final day of the meet, the commentators announced that Portsmouth held a one point lead over Warrender, with Aberdeen just two points further back.  It would all come down to the final race of the whole competition, the girls 4x200 freestyle relay.

Split into two age groups (11-13 and 14-17), there were effectively two events in one and Warrender’s 11-13 years team of Camille Brash, Yasmin Khera, Rachael McQueen and Ailsa Small swam superbly despite relative inexperience to place 6th.  However, City of Aberdeen finished third, meaning a three point swing, and a one point lead in their favour with one heat of the older girls to go.  With Portsmouth not contesting the relay, it was going to be a head to head battle, with Warrender needing to finish two places ahead of Aberdeen to take the title. 

Katelyn Stewart got the Warrender 14-17 years team off to a good start with a 2:10.90 split and fourth place with Aberdeen back in sixth.  Sally Wood took over from Katelyn and swam a ‘blinder’.  A split time of 2:08.85 was two seconds inside her best for the distance and took the capital club into the lead with Aberdeen moving up to fourth.  Rosie Hood maintained the lead on the third leg splitting 2:10.01, also much faster than she had ever done before.  Rosie handed over to Helen McRoberts for the anchor leg, with Helen’s time of 2:10.08 securing the race victory.  But what of Aberdeen?  They could only manage fourth place, and so the three point swing from the younger girls’ race was reversed and Warrender took the Top Club title by two points with the very last swim of the meet.

It was a tremendously exciting finish to what had been a very tough but ultimately excellent competition.  With 43 swimmers entered in the meet, contributions towards the team result came from all quarters and it is difficult to single any one or a few swimmers out for particular praise as everyone played their part in the overall success.  Great points scoring swims came as expected from established national squad swimmers, but also from many previously unheralded swimmers at this level who made the step up in class to impress and surprise everyone.  Much of the credit for such performances goes to the club’s Director of Age Group Swimming Laurel Bailey, who has done a superb job of guiding these swimmers over the past 18 months.

Although not wanting to single any of the points scorers out, noteworthy comments can perhaps be made of a couple of swimmers who whilst being part of the Warrender set up, were not eligible to score team points.  Jennifer Dobson swam ‘unattached’ at the meet after moving to Warrender a few weeks ago and set best times in almost every event when making regular visits to the podium in the girls 13 years age group.  And in the boys 12/under category, Craig Benson was in scintillating form winning no less than six titles.  Craig was representing his local club Livingston but is now training full time with Warrender.

Warrender Head Coach Ian Wright was delighted with the outcome, “This was a tough meet and to win the top club award against strong opposition from the excellent teams from Aberdeen, Glasgow and Portsmouth was a fantastic achievement.  There were many ups and downs over the four days and although we still have a lot of improving to do, the swimmers responded brilliantly to the challenges they faced.  We showed great consistency across all the events and came together as a team each day extremely well.”

The Warrender squad will now take a couple of days off to recover before returning to heavy training in preparation for the Scottish Senior Championships in late June and the British Age & Youth Championships in late July.