After a relaxing Easter weekend, EPSC swimmers where back in the pool racing in the Crawley LC Open Meet. The weekend begun with a fantastic swim from Annabel Pilgrim, competing in the 800m Freestyle swimming a 7 second pb in a time of 10:33.96 and achieving an automatic regional time!

Saturday was a very early start for those involved and there were some really strong swims with most swimmers just outside their pbs. The second session of the day started with the girls 100m free with some great pbs for Kyarra Steele, Annabel Pilgrim, Emily Pilgrim and Zoe Bainbridge. The boys 100m breast followed with more pbs from Oli Flack and Matthew O’Sullivan. The session ended with a few 50s with Emma Solimeno and Thomas Hatchett updating their pbs in girls 50m fly and boys 50m back. The day was tough with minimal rest between sessions and EPSC finished with a gold for Sarah Soliman and an 11 second pb in the 200m breast one of the swims of the day!

Well done to all involved and roll on Sunday!

Glen Melson

Assistant Head Coach

Sunday did roll on…. early, but with a great start to the first session, over 4 second PB for Thomas Hatchett in the 200 Bk. The session continued with 6 Elmbridge swimmers competing in the 200 Free. Some strongly competed heats produced some fine swims with good PBs, the highlight being Zoe Bainbridge taking 2.73 seconds off her best time.

The next session of this very busy meet gave us more strong swims, Oli Flack and Matthew O’Sullivan swimming well in the 100 Free, Oli smashing his PB by 5 seconds and Matt coming very close to beating his. The 100 BS saw Kyarra, Zoe, Zara Hart and Brigit Wilson all swimming strong with more PBs and a silver medal for Kyarra. The session continued with good swimming and some very good PBs. Tom Howells and Thomas Hatchett both made huge time improvements in the 200IM. The penultimate event of the session produced a fine swim and a gold medal for Matt O’Sullivan in the 50 Fly. Finally, Cerys Howells, Emily and Annabel Pilgrim all gave great performances and Niamh Kennedy took the silver medal in the 50 Bk.

Like Saturday, this was a tough day for most swimmers with only short rests between sessions. The final session started with the boys 50 BS, with some very impressive swimming from our 5 swimmers, Oli Flack continued a great weekend for him with another fine PB. Matt, Cam and George Berendji all swam well and particularly George who smashed his PB. Next the girls 50 free, which always produces fiercely contested races and this was no exception. Of the seven Elmbridge girls racing 4 beat their PBs with the other 3 coming close. Thomas Hatchet once again got another PB in the 100 fly, an event that produced a great head to head race between our swimmers, Matt O’Sullivan and Tom Portbury. Tom prevailed by .05 secs and a PB.

The overall medal tally was 5 Bronze, 8 Silver, and 9 Gold a fantastic result all round!

This was a Level 1 open meet, the quality of competition was, as you would expect, very high. The 23 swimmers from Elmbridge gave a very good account of themselves, as always, not only in the pool but on poolside as a team. Glen and myself would like to thank Eve Perry and Cam White, our club captains, for their help and support over what was a very long weekend.

Stuart