100 junior swimmers from Hemel were joined by over 200 other swimmers from Berkhamsted, Bushey, Hitchin, Royal Tunbridge Wells, St Albans, and Wycombe in Hemel’s 4th Spring Development Meet. The Hemel squad excelled themselves, posting over 320 personal best or first time swims out of 400 swims.
With almost every swimmer setting at least one personal best time it’s inviduous to pick out individual performances, but some are worthy of special comment. Holly Robinson set a new 9 year old Club record for the 50 fly. Millie Herbert delivered 8 PBs from 8 swims including impressive improvements of 13 seconds in both her 100 free and 100 fly and 10 seconds off her 100 breast. Jamie Sewell and Amber Stratford both set 7 PBs from 7 swims whilst Freya Beresford, Mia Hobson, Daniel Keates and Emily Young all set 6 PBs from 6 swims. Mattias Morse averaged a 10 second improvement on each of his 4 swims whlst the biggest PB on the day for a Hemel swimmer was Chris Cox’ massive 27 seconds in his 100 breast.
A number of swimmers put down markers for the 2015/16 season. Bearing in mind that the competition had no faster than entry times set at the level of this year’s county championships, both Jonny Farrow and Luke Pestaille improved their entry times sufficiently to be swimming at 2015 regional pace, whilst the following swam at 2015 county pace for their current age, often in more than one event – Kizzie Beckwith, Freya Beresford, Eleanor Bevan, Sonny Carter, Grace Cawley, Joe Coldwell, Sam Gaines, Lois Goad, Millie Herbert, Samuel Hutchings, Elizabeth Kelly, Ciaran Kilbane, Niall Marsden, Mattias Morse, Henry Newbury-Kemp, Chloe Purkis, Holly Robinson, Rebecca Rumble, Rebecca Sewell, Shaminah Sherwani-Keeling, Amber Stratford, Tillie Stratford, Jess Walters and Sam Ward.