Rotherham Metro swimmers again featured prominently during the last weekend of the Yorkshire Swimming Association long course championships at Ponds Forge. Day one consisted of individual 50 metre sprints whilst day two gave swimmers the opportunity to take part in the team relays.
Proving her quality once again was 12 year old Debbie Cocking who reached four of of four individual finals. Debbie took the Yorkshire title in the 50 metre butterfly final with a dominant swim and followed this up with 4th place in the freestyle and 5th in both the breaststroke and backstroke.
Callum Simmons made three finals in the 9 year old boys sections and converted them all into medal winning performances. Callum claimed two silver medals in the butterfly and freestyle together with a bronze in the backstroke to complete an impressive hat-trick.
Abigail Jackson swam to a bronze in the 10 year old girls freestyle final to take the Metro medal tally to five. Abigail also made the finals of the butterfly where she finished 4th and the breaststroke where she finished 9th. Numerous other Metro swimmers swam well to reach finals including Jack Anderson who just missed out on medals finishing 4th in both the backstroke and freestyle finals together with 8th in the butterfly. Robert Pearson also came close to a medal in the backstroke where he finished 4th and he also took 5th in the freestyle. Connor Neal continued his good form by finishing 5th in the breaststroke and 10th in the backstroke.
Also making two finals were Harri Thorman, 7th freestyle, 9th backstroke and Rebecca Britten 7th backstoke, 10th freestyle. Whilst Alicia Hartley finished 7th in the breaststroke final and Jess Bushby 8th in the butterfly.
Day two saw the relay teams take centre stage and Metro teams competed well against strong teams from across the county with most teams making the relay finals. The 9/10year old boys team, consisting of Harri Thorman, Harold Cocking, Callum Simmons and Thomas Blank, showed their quality by claiming bronze in the medley final and capped this with a silver in the freestyle final. The 15/16 year old boys team consisting of Connor Wood, George Russell, Robert Pearson and Josh Hillman also swam well to take bronze in the freestyle final to round off a good day from Metro swimmers. Head Coach Alan Kirton commented that the swimmers had “achieved some excellent results this
weekend due to hard work and dedication”.