Shone shines

NICK Shone was Harpenden Swimming Club's star performer at the Hertfordshire ASA Daplyn Trophy at Woodside, Watford, winning the 50m fly in a personal best of 32.14.

The club entered both a girls team and a boys team in the event, with the girls taking seventh place overall out of 19 and the boys finishing joint sixth out of 15 teams.

Ed Cook also performed well, finishing third in the 50m freestyle in 31.59 which was also a personal best. The performance of the Boys team was remarkable given that they were a swimmer short and so only had six scoring swims rather than the seven they could have had.

Meanwhile, at Herts Sports Village the club's juniors competed in CoStA's Xmas gala which allowed the club to blood some of their new generation of swimmers.

With a number of swimmers unavailable through sickness the club performed extremely well. Top performances on the night came from Michael Revell who took first place in both 50m butterfly and 50m breaststroke with personal bests in both, Harry Hughes, who won the 50m free and Daniel Campfield, who took first in the 50m breaststroke both in personal best times.

Other swimmers who recorded personal bests were Jess Garner and Juliet Merelie, who recorded two each. 11 year old Phoebe Salkeld produced a superb time of 35.37 in the freestyle and Helena Robertson clocked up a new personal best in the 50m free. Eleanor Lavender and Tania De Malglaive both beat their previous best in the 50m back and Matthew Burrell and Isaac Rickets recorded two Personal Bests each in their swims.

All in all, the swimmers recorded an impressive 17 personal bests from 24 individual races against some of the top teams in the county, giving the club a lot of hope for the 2009 season.

If you would like more details about Harpenden Swimming Club, please contact them by phone 07767 683956, email administrator@harpendensc.co.uk, or visit their website www.harpendensc.co.uk.

The club remain keen to recruit competitive swimmers at all levels.