8 September 2010

Lots of life time best per­for­mances help bring home the wom­en’s team tro­phy for the sec­ond year run­ning with the club fin­ish­ing sec­ond top team overall. 

Top club final standings

Top team

  1. Plymouth Leander 328
  2. City of Leeds 283
  3. City of Sheffield 182

Top men’s team

  • 1. Plymouth Leander 249
  • 2. City of Sheffield 123
  • 3. Warrender 96
  • 13. City of Leeds 36

Top women’s team

  1. City of Leeds 247
  2. City of Manchester 129
  3. City of Newcastle 122

Day 1 (03/08): Dis­tance freestyle girls deliv­er and a shock bronze for the men’s freestyle team

The City of Leeds Swim­ming Club got off to a great start on day one at the ASA Nation­al Youth Cham­pi­onships in Sheffield. 

The heats of the Girls 14/15 yrs 400m indi­vid­ual med­ley set the stan­dard with life time best per­for­mances (LTB) from the quar­tet of Emi­ly Jones, Emi­ly Vose, Rebec­ca Whal­ing and Made­line Fale. Anne Bochmann then stepped up to qual­i­fy fastest for the final of the girls 16/​17yrs 400m indi­vid­ual med­ley and secured our first gold medal of the cham­pi­onships with a sea­sons best per­for­mance lat­er in the day. 

The 200m but­ter­fly heats then saw Lucy Emer­son, Anne Bochmann, Anna Chees­bor­ough, Bethany Cog­gins and Danielle Hall-Jack­son pro­duce some of their best per­for­mances of the sea­son to qual­i­fy for their respec­tive semi finals and Anne Bochmann and Emma Gra­ham moved safe­ly through to book their place in the 100m freestyle semi finals. 

The shock result of the first morn­ing but no less deserved, came from the Men’s 4 x 100 freestyle Quar­tet of James Har­ri­son, Ross Glegg, Gareth Mills, and Math­ew Vose when they went from ranked last on the pro­gramme to secure their place in the final in 8th posi­tion, mov­ing up some 21 places. The final then saw Math­ew lead the team out with a life time best 53.80 and the rest of quar­tet went on to pro­duce an out­stand­ing and inspired team per­for­mance to secure a well earned bronze medal against all the odds! 

In the 1500m freestyle that occu­pied the after­noon ses­sion before the finals, the City of Leeds shone once again when Danielle Hall-Jack­son put the dis­ap­point­ment of the Euro­pean Junior Cham­pi­onships behind her with a great swim to retain her nation­al title in a sea­son’s best of 16.46.52 and Emma Gra­ham who had only recent­ly returned from Hol­land where she was crowned Euro­pean Junior Open Water Cham­pi­on secured a well earned sil­ver to help put the City of Leads at the top of the Team Cham­pi­onship table after day one. 

Day 2 (04/08): Dou­ble gold and a British record on day two

The first final of day two saw the duet of Danielle Hall-Jack­son and Anne Bochmann pro­duce gold medal win­ning per­for­mances for the City of Leeds, Danielle with a life time best per­for­mance of 4.17.9 in the girls 14/​15yrs age group and Anne Bochmann, who pro­duced the per­for­mance of her life to win the girls 16/​17yrs age group title and set a new British Age Group record of 4.10.99 along the way. 

The girls 200m but­ter­fly finals that saw all five City of Leeds swim­mers rep­re­sent­ed after the semi finals the day before, was no less suc­cess­ful for the club when Lucy Emer­son won her first indi­vid­ual medal at a Nation­al Youth Cham­pi­onships tak­ing the sil­ver in a mag­nif­i­cent LTB per­for­mance of 2.16.50, close­ly fol­lowed by Anne Bochmann in the girls 16/17 years tak­ing her sec­ond title of the day with anoth­er life time best per­for­mance of 2.13.30, only 10 min­utes after the 400m freestyle! 

Gareth Mills made it safe­ly through to the means 200m but­ter­fly final togeth­er with Rebec­ca Davies, Avril Kirishenko and Han­nah War­dle in the Girls 200m breast­stroke, and both Ross Glegg and James Har­ri­son were through to the boys 100m freestyle final. 

We had but one rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the boys 1500m freestyle in Gareth Mills but he did not dis­ap­point as he was deter­mined to add as much as pos­si­ble to the team points total and did just that with a great swim in a very fast final heat and very close to his LTB

Anne Bochmann then went on win a bronze medal in the final of the girls 16/17 years 100m freestyle in a sea­sons best and then went on to anchor the girls 4 x 100 freestyle team where togeth­er with Emma Gra­ham, Danielle Hall-Jack­son and Lucy Emer­son, they match the boys from day one with a bronze medal and our sec­ond relay medal of the Cham­pi­onships. Rebec­ca Whal­ing also found her­self in her first nation­al final of her career with a sol­id per­for­mance just out­side the life time best she set in the semi finals, all con­tribut­ing to the City of Leeds stay­ing top of the Team Cham­pi­onship table after day two! 

Day 3 (05/08): Leeds dou­ble their gold medal haul

No less than twelve swim­mers qual­i­fied for the semi finals after anoth­er suc­cess­ful morn­ing heats ses­sion for the club. 

The after­noon ses­sion ded­i­cat­ed to the girls 800m freestyle saw Danielle Hall-Jack­son and Anne Bochmann go head to head with Jes­si­ca Thiel­man from the City of New­cas­tle and the Leeds girls once again came out on top. 

Danielle fin­ished first in the girls 14/15 years in a new LTB of 8.44.58 as did Anne Bochmann in the girls 16/17 years age group to add anoth­er two gold medals to the ever increas­ing total. Leeds have great strength in depth in this event and of the eight swim­mers who took part, five achieved a top 10 posi­tion and added valu­able points to the team total. 

The oth­er high­light of the day came in evening with the girls 200m breast­stroke finals. Rebec­ca Davies set the scene in the girls 14/15 years age group in mak­ing her first Nation­al final and con­firm­ing the progress she has made through­out the sea­son and scor­ing well for the team. The girls 16/17 years final saw two rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the City of Leeds in Han­nah War­dle and Avril Kirishenko qual­i­fy­ing in 6th and 4th place respec­tive­ly. How­ev­er, Avril nev­er looked back after lead­ing from the front to achieve her first nation­al title with a 5 sec­ond LTB and Han­na came through with a typ­i­cal­ly strong last 25m to take the bronze medal for an out­stand­ing dou­ble medal win­ning per­for­mance for the club. 

With Gareth Mills, James Har­ri­son, and Ross Glegg and Freya Rezen­dez also find­ing them­selves in the finals on day three with life­time or sea­sons best per­for­mances, and the Men’s 4 x 200 freestyle Team (Daniel Gill, Ross Glegg, Gareth Mills and James Har­ri­son) reach­ing their final much in the same fash­ion that saw them take the bronze medal in the 4 x 100m freestyle relay, the City of Leeds were still on top of the points table with only two days remaining! 

Day 4 (06/08): Relay gold for the girls and Leeds still num­ber one

Day four at the meet got off to a qui­et start for the team, but Emma Gra­ham began her cam­paign in the 50m freestyle by mov­ing through to the semi final and then the final lat­er in the day and our 200m breast­stroke medal win­ners, Han­nah War­dle and Avril Kirishenko made sure of their spot in the semi finals in the 100m event. 

Anne Bochmann secured her fifth gold medal of the Cham­pi­onships in the Girls 200m freestyle with a LTB per­for­mance of 2.01.30 win­ning by just 9/​100ths of a sec­ond, and then went on to take the bronze medal in the 100m but­ter­fly putting in anoth­er LTB per­for­mance of 61.15 as did Freya Rezen­dez in her first Nation­al final with a 64.87 per­for­mance in the girls 14/15 years age group. 

The girls then went on to qual­i­fy togeth­er with a busy Han­nah War­dle, who had to swim her LTB only min­utes after her breast­stroke semi, to make the final of the girls 200m indi­vid­ual medley. 

The after­noon ses­sion was giv­en over to the Men’s 800m freestyle with Ross Glegg the only rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the City of Leeds and whilst he nar­row­ly missed a top ten place he nonethe­less dropped his LTB by over 5 seconds. 

The high­light of the day how­ev­er, came in the final of the girls 4 x 200 freestyle Team where the City of Leeds led from the front with an inspired per­for­mance from Emma Gra­ham to lead the team out in a sea­sons best of 2.03.04, which was all the more remark­able as she had only just left the pool after win­ning more points for the team by fin­ish­ing 5th with a LTB swim in the final of the 50m freestyle. This gave team mates (Danielle Hall-Jack­son, Lucy Emer­son and Anne Bochmann) a lead that was nev­er chal­lenge and a vic­to­ry that improved on the sil­ver medal from the same event the pre­vi­ous year and took the gold medal tal­ly for the club one step clos­er to dou­ble fig­ures and helped to retain out No1 team posi­tion with one day to go! 

Day 5 (07/08): Three more gold medals and top team tro­phy for the girls

The final day of rac­ing saw James Har­ri­son and Math­ew Vose begin their cam­paign in the 50m freestyle with both lads secur­ing their place in their respec­tive semi-finals. James missed out on his final by just one place and Math­ew Vose proved a lit­tle more for­tu­nate by fin­ish­ing tenth after the semi final. How­ev­er, in the final Math­ew raised his game with a LTB per­for­mance of 24.48 and moved up no less than five places from an out­side lane which was typ­i­cal of the way the whole team had risen to the chal­lenge through­out the meet. 

Avril Kirishenko did the dou­ble when win­ning her sec­ond title of the meet in the Girls 16/17 years 100m breast­stroke. Han­nah War­dle nar­row­ly missed match­ing her result in the 200m breast­stroke in fin­ish­ing 4th albeit with a LTB per­for­mance of 1.12.95 and then stepped up togeth­er with Anne Bochmann in the final of the 200m indi­vid­ual med­ley, who sub­se­quent­ly took her per­son­al gold medal tal­ly total to six with anoth­er fin­ger­tip vic­to­ry over Jes­si­ca Thiel­man from the City of Newcastle. 

The heats of the Girls 4 x 100 med­ley Team saw the City of Leeds qual­i­fy sec­ond behind a very strong Hilling­don team, pro­duc­ing a final where poten­tial­ly any of the top five teams could win. How­ev­er, as the last race of the Cham­pi­onships, the team of Rebec­ca Whal­ing, Avril Kirishenko, Anne Bochmann, and Emma Gra­ham were deter­mined to take the vic­to­ry, and whilst not lead­ing at any stage dur­ing the race until the last 50m, they took gold with a storm­ing last leg of 56.87 from Emma Gra­ham for a win that reflect­ed the way in which the swim­mers had embraced the Team Above All” eth­ic that had defined our championships. 

In the end Ply­mouth Lean­der were too strong for us on the last day of the meet and moved ahead to win the over­all team tro­phy by only 40 points, but the girls team once again took the Girls Team Tro­phy with a points mar­gin of 120 points over the next team home. 

A great team effort from the swim­mers, coach­es and team staff. Well done everyone! 

Medal table

Club  Gold  Silver  Bronze  Total 
City of Leeds 12  3  4  19 
Ply­mouth Leander  8  8  3  19 
City of Sheffield  8  1  3  12 

Life­time best per­for­mances: 70 
Sea­son’s best per­for­mances: 101