Spencer takes third place at Surrey County Champs!

Olegas Petrikas reports from Surrey Sports Park:

Spencer’s June success continues! Spencer Swim Team took part in the 2019 Surrey County Masters Championships. This year we were 14 swimmers strong, one swimmer down from last year. But it was not all doom and gloom, with the team tallying up points to take third place behind a strong Guildford City.
Saturday 29th June brought about many individual successes:
• A tsunami of PBs for Barbara Halls including a massive and well-earned 5 second pb in the 100m breastroke! Barbara placed 2nd in ladies individual rankings in the 35-44 Age Group!
• Dan Cotton’s astonishing 100m backstroke swim gaining him the British record! Dan is the first in Britain to go sub-minute in 45-49 age group. The previous record has stood firm for almost a decade #nooneslikedantheman!!!
• Tristan Slater dominated the whole event #allhailtristan
• Emma Gibbins returned to a competition pool after a 35 year hiatus #returnofaprodigalswimmer
• Liam Kelly tricked himself into doing 100m fly instead of a 50m #fairdinkumlegend
• Luca Milana swam almost every single event and still managed to get two PBs #italianstalion (same number of events as the writer, but the writer could not bring himself to swim 200m free as he feels it is 150m out of his comfort zone)
• Olegas Petrikas also swam (nearly!) every event, medalling in all but one and getting a couple of cheeky PBs in the process! Olegas placed 2nd in men’s individual rankings in the 25-34 Age Group.
• Georgina Quayle and coach Steve Baker were absolute legends for swimming the London Champs open water 5k race in the morning (and medalling there too) to then join us at Surrey Sports Park for more pain and glory
• Mel Thomas placed 3rd in ladies individual rankings in the 25-34 Age Group only 5 points short of the 1st place. Mel came all the way from Wales to have one last big splash (for now) with the team, getting gold and an excellent time in the 50m backstroke! We will see you again soon! Don’t forget to train in Wales!!!
• Godfrey Admans was his usual cool collected self and smashed his swims like a champion!
• Laura Kerrigan likes county champs so much she could swim them every weekend (she actually did…) #dedicationtothecause
• Simon Berry flew the out-of-townies flag solo and with distinction
• Olivier Geleoc arrived uncharacteristically on time and smashed his swims. The only person in the pool seemingly having a bad day was the announcer struggling to pronounce Olivier’s surname but not letting this getting in the way of her trying.
Everyone came home with sacks full of medals (literally everyone), and there were some epically close relay finishes! And we mean CLOSE! The Spencer A mixed relay team came in 1st by one second and Spencer B team finishing second beating Guildford by 0.09 seconds! Tense time for all!! In the third session, Spencer B freestyle team beat the Spencer A time by 0.40 seconds coming in 2nd and 3rd places!
And to summarise the team successes of the day:
• Spencer Relay team placed 2nd overall
• Spencer men’s team placed 2nd overall
• Spencer ladies team placed 4th overall
In the top club category Spencer came 3rd with 611 points (and a very close second behind Godalming, only 17 points in it!). That is a massive jump from the last year’s 7th place with 407 points.
A big shout out to Laura and Luca for organising the relay teams. An amazing job guys!
An even bigger shout out and thank you to coach Steve Baker for training and coaching us to be able perform so well.
Thank you all for your hard work and contribution.
WELL DONE EVERYONE!

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