News Archive

News items archived from the home page.

Winter 2009/10

In the annual B Grade meet at the Ponds Forge 50m pool in Sheffield Jack Britchford and Ian Yarwood were first and third respectively in both the Boys 13U 100m and 50m freestyle. However both received a 'speeding ticket' in the 100m for swimming faster than the permitted cut off times for an event at this level. In addition Jack was also second in the Boys 13U Backstroke. Ashlee Ward was third in the Girls 15U 100m Backstroke and 50m Freestyle.

In late December the team braved the sub zero arctic conditions to catch the team bus to Aylesbury. The weather did not dampen spirits and the team were upbeat and determined to perform well on their final outing of 2009 with an assortment of Santa hats on show. Out of 49 events 17 were won, 10 individual and 7 relays with some fine individual and relay performances throughout the age groups. The final squadron relay was won by a considerable margin and demonstrated the emerging strength in depth as a team.

Individual winners were: Brittany Wells (Girls 10U 50M Back), Charlie Savage (Boys 12U 50M Fly & 12U 50M Free), Ally Sloan (Boys 12U 50M Back), Matt Aitken (Boys Open 100M Free), Beth Saunders (Girls 10U 50M Breast), Sophie Aitken (Girls 14U 100M Back), Andrew Ward (Boys Open 100M Fly), Molly Britchford (Girls 10U 50M Free), Marcus Eaton (Boys Open 100M Back). During the evening the team also had 7 winning performances (5 of them club records) that were faster than the cut-off times which meant no points recorded and probably dented any real chances of an overall victory.

Final scores:
Crusaders 222
Aylesbury 190
Rushden 189
Henley 148
Newport Pagnell 146
Thame 91

We now start training for the County Championships in March. Watch us go in 2010!!

Summer 2009

Rushden Swimming Club's new season kicked off with two good performances in contrasting meets at Wellingborough and Coventry. The Springfir Trophy (Grade A) was comfortably won by Kettering from Wellingborough in second and Rushden in third some way ahead of Corby. The Summer training had clearly paid off with Rushden swimmers achieving 15 PBs out of 32 swims of which 9 were club records.

A week later 13 swimmers travelled up to the East Midlands for the City of Coventry Sprints in the Sports Centre 50m pool. All heats were 50m in each of the four strokes for all ages from 9 upwards. At the end of the heats the 8 swimmers from each age group with the combined fastest times competed in the final which was a 200 individual medley race. In a tremendous race Danny Savage won the Boys 9 yrs final by less than half a second. In the others finals Bethany Saunders was 6th in the Girls 10 yrs, Shannon O'Dell 2nd in the girls 14 yrs, Andrew Ward 3rd in the boys 14 yrs, Ashlee Ward 2nd in the girls 15 yrs, Jack Britchford 4th and Ian Yarwood 5th in the boys 13 yrs. Rushden swimmers had an excellent day against some much bigger clubs.

Elsewhere other notable performances by Rushden swimmers came from Andrew Ward and Sam Henman who swam for Northamptonshire schools at Braunstone, Leicester against 5 other counties. Sam came 4th in the senior Boys 100m breaststroke and the 50m Freestyle. Andrew came 3rd in the Intermediate Boys 100m Butterfly and the 50m Freestyle.

Welch Trophy Win

RSC held onto the Welch Trophy for another year after overhauling the two strong Wellingborough teams in the final stages. We started steadily and were still behind with only a handful of races to go. However we finished very strongly with an impressive 6 wins in the last 14 races plus other good placings edging us past Wellingborough AL. The eventual margin of victory was a narrow 6 points. The team had a total of 5 individual wins, 4 relay wins with 14 personal bests achieved by the swimmers. More results

Forthcoming Fixtures

• This was last gala before the summer break and was always going to be hard one for us competing against teams like Northampton, Wellingborough and Kettering with their regional and national swimmers out in force. Whilst we came 5th out of 6th overall our swimmers did their very best to compete. Out of the 40 individual events we had 21 PB’s and of these 9 were new club records. More information
• This was last gala before the summer break and was always going to be hard one for us competing against teams like Northampton, Wellingborough and Kettering with their regional and national swimmers out in force. Whilst we came 5th out of 6th overall our swimmers did their very best to compete. Out of the 40 individual events we had 21 PB’s and of these 9 were new club records.