| The Arena team showed great tenacity and fight throughout the second round of the competition at Luton, coming fifth on the night with many close finishes. Despite a number of absences they actually swam faster than in the previous round, posting the fourth fastest time ever by a Hemel team, suggesting that there’s still more to come in the last round. Alice Fender won the 100 free, there were 17 other second and third places, 11 individual PBs and three Club age group records by Heidi Gibbens in the 100 breast and Sam Gaines in the 100 |  |
| fly and 200 IM (breaking his brother’s record by 7 hundredths of a second!). Sam was also part of the boys u16 relay team along with Ashley Coombs, Jonny Farrow, Cameron Clark (in the free) and Joe Coldwell (medley) which set new Club Arena records in both their relays, breaking records previously set in 2008. Other Club Arena records were set by Ashley, Georgia Purkis and Jack Christie. | |
There were top 3 finishes by the girls u12 free and medley team (Grace Cawley, Holly Robinson, Freya Goad and Elizabeth Kelly), the boys u13 medley team (Sam Ward, Seyi Bankole, Mattias Morse and Lewis Clark), the girls u16 free and medley team (Alice Fender, Izzy Anderton, Georgia Purkis and Shona McKenna) and both open free teams (for the girls – Becky Hopper, Paige Wilding, Kira Doyle, Keelin McKenna, Rebecca Sewell and Alice Fender, and for the boys – Jack Christie, Jacob Hutchings, Kyle Holmes, Ashley Coombs, Sam Gaines and Joe Gillam). There were individual top three finishes by Holly Robinson, Mattias Morse, Leanne Abrey, Keelin McKenna, Elizabeth Kelly, Ashley Coombs, Jack Christie and Georgia Purkis. The rest of the team was Millie Anderton, Freya Beresford, Seve Carrillo de Albornoz, Dylan Kennell, Niall Marsden, Henry Newbury-Kemp, Jess Walters, Sam Ward, Nathan Whiting and Emily Young.