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Head of competition Andrew Stokes was full of praise for Buxton swimmers after they took on some of the biggest clubs in the Midlands at the prestigious Derventio Excel Short Course Gala.

With tough qualification times just to get into the gala, which was held at the Arc in Matlock, the Buxton club knew they would be up against some seriously good opposition.

But Stokes aaid: “Our select team showed they can achieve not only great times but also a raft of medals against the bigger clubs.

“This was a really tough gala for a small club like Buxton, but our performances will set our swimmers in the right direction as they prepare for the county championships in December.”

Seth Partridge celebrated victory in the 50m butterfly, while Ollie Ecob was second in the 50m freestyle and third in the 50m backstroke, and Matthew Foreman (50m butterfly), Chloe Montgomery White (100m individual medley) and James Ralph (100m individual medley) collected third places.

Personal-best times were recorded by Ralph, Montgomery White, Reece Bromley and Mia Stokes.

Olympic hopeful Abbie Wood returned home this week to launch a new initiative at Buxton Swimming Club in her name.

The Abbie Wood Academy has been created by the club to ensure young swimmers making their first steps into competitive swimming have the key fundamentals of racing embedded early on.

Wood, a multiple junior medalist on the international scene has gone on to represent Team GB and England across the world, started at the Buxton pool.

“I started my swimming journey here at Buxton pool and the town’s swimming club” Abbie told the younger swimmers.

Her list of honours include 400m individual medley gold, 200m individual medley bronze and 4x100m medley relay bronze at the 2015 European Games in Baku and competing at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in Australia.

The new academy’s head coach Liam McWee said: “Getting Abbie involved in our new academy is fantastic and it’s great to welcome her back in such a key season in the build up to next summer’s Olympics. Abbie’s skill level is so high and I’m sure our younger swimmers will be inspired by her.”

Wood is scheduled to return during the autumn term to spend time coaching and demonstrating techniques to the academy swimmers.

Richie Ralph, chairman of Buxton Swimming Club, added “We are so pleased to have Abbie involved in the club’s new section – and even more pleased when she agreed to us naming it The Abbie Wood Academy”.

With the new race season on the horizon, the club is encouraging new swimmers to sign up. Interested in joining the academy? Email membership@buxtonswimmingclub.co.uk

Buxton swimming club performed brilliantly once again at the Satellites Gala in Macclesfield, with most swimmers knocking their personal bests (PB’s) out of the water and many coming away with one or more medals.

There were some great performances, notably a battle for the boys 12 and under 400 freestyle where James Ralph and Oliver Ecob swam stroke for stroke with Oliver getting the gold medal by just 0.72 seconds despite an amazing last length from James. Charlie Boam got numerous medals and 6 PB’s along with 6 PB’s for Mia Stokes. Olivia Pope and Bethan Pollard both got 7 PB’s, Chloe Montgomery-White got 5 PB’s as did Izzi Stokes after a long stretch with injury. 9 year old Anwen Williams swam a remarkable 1:28.65 100 freestyle in her first ever gala as a 9 year old.

“There were some brilliant swims at Macclesfield and the team were by far the loudest cheering on their team mates which is brilliant to see. Every gala we go to now our swimmers are doing better and better and it fantastic to see them working hard in training to get results in the competitions. Although they are competing for individual times the team spirit they have is outstanding and the encouragement from the older swimmers to the younger ones is admirable.  The weekend was fun filled, energetic and an impressive achievement for our club” said Andrew Stokes – Assistant Head Coach.

Buxton Swimming Club has attended the Derbyshire Swimming Championships for the past two weekends after a good season of competing and training for the club so far. These championships are the main annual goal for our competitive swimmers and this year we had the most qualifiers in recent times which is fantastic for the club.

Over the two weekends Buxton had 155 swims and from that our swimmers achieved 74 personal bests which is a fantastic proportion! Over and above that though Buxton swimmers reached 20 finals which is something quite amazing and came away with 5 medals from those finals including 2 golds for Oliver Ecob with an amazing last 10m in the 50 freestyle and Amy Mead in the 100IM. Medals also went to Charlie Boam; silver in 200 back, James Ralph; bronze in 400 free, Elle Turner; bronze in 400IM and Louis Ecob; silver in 100 freestyle and bronze in 50 freestyle. Oliver Ecob also took bronze in the 50 backstroke. In the over 20’s category assistant coach Lauren Hurley collected 4 golds, 2 silvers and 2 bronze medals with a great 2 weekends work!

Assistant Head Coach Andrew Stokes commented “we are massively proud of the work the swimmers put in in training to get to peak condition for the counties and to have our swimmers get so many PB’s and reach finals shows how far the club and it’s swimmers have come in the last 12 months.”

Buxton Swimming Squad swam into action at the Ripley Rascals 46th Anniversary Open Meet in Matlock on the 5th and 6th January 2019.

Ripley Rascals saw one of the biggest teams Buxton has taken to a gala in recent years, with 34 swimmers ageing from 9 to 22.  It was the last chance for qualification times for the Derbyshire County Championships, so the expectation and anticipation was high!

Buxton gave an impressive performance against some strong competition and came away with a stack of medals with Personnel Bests (PB’s) being smashed out of the water!   We had 20 new qualifying times, 16 medal winners and around 80% of the swims resulted in PB’s, a truly amazing performance from all the swimmers.  Assistant Head Coach Andrew Stokes said “we’ve been working really hard towards the counties this year and we got some amazing swims at Ripley.  It’s not fair to single people out but is safe to say we are immensely proud of the swimmers and thank them for all their hard work which has paid off.”  Buxton now has the highest number of qualifiers for the Derbyshire County Championships for a long time with 29 swimmers achieving qualification times.

Our medal winners were:

Charlie Boam, Callum Jelleyman, Chloe Montgomery White, Matthew Foreman, Mia Stokes, James Ralph, Ryan Cornish, Flow Harris Wood, Oliver Ecob, Louis Ecob, Ellenor Turner, Hamish Thompson, Seth Partridge, Olivia Pope, Euan Freeman and Boris Holliday.

It was an exciting weekend full of team spirit and a great way to start 2019!

Team Spirit runs high at Buxton Swimming Club

Great fun was had by all at Buxton Swimming Club’s  annual Presentation Night at the Old Club House last Saturday.  2018 has been an outstanding year for the club following the appointment of Liam McWee as Head Coach and Verity Mycock as Lessons Coordinator.  Successes include the winning of the Crusader division with the club moving up a division next year, record numbers of swimmers turning out for open meets and 11 new club records from Charlie Boam, Eleanor Turner and Louis & Oliver Ecob.

Hundreds of medals and 70+ trophies were given out to all ages from 7 years upwards.

• Top Boy and Top Girl of the Club Championships were named as Mathew Foreman & Chloe Montgomery-White, with 8 gold medals going to Chloe Montgomery White, Isobel Stokes and Mia Stokes & 7 going to Charlie Boam & Mathew Foreman.
• Top Boy and Top Girl of the Novice Gala were Daniel Fitzgerald and Anwen Williams with Annabelle Montgomery-White picking up the Endeavour award.

Trophies were presented by Paralympian Track Cyclist Anthony Kappes MBE, who brought his medals from London & Beijing to show to the swimmers.

The swimmers let their hair down on the dance floor and showed their team spirit in the annual ‘Human Pyramid’ competition, with the girls once again showing the boys a thing or two.  The boys got their own back on the karaoke however, thanks to Finn Hornsey-Saunders fabulous rendition of George Ezra’s ‘Budapest’.

A massive thank you goes to both Anthony Kappes for presenting and to Mo El-Fatih, who took some fantastic photographs on the night.

The club championships were held on two consecutive Sundays in October, and the results are on the following links:

Club Championships 2018 Gala 1 – 14th October 2018
Club Championships 2018 Gala 2 – 21st October 2018

Buxton Swimming Club have been in action yet again the past two weekends. For our 1st Open Meet of March we headed to Macclesfield in which we took one of the biggest teams in Buxton’s history – 36 swimmers. The 1 day event saw PBs broken again just a few weeks after the Derbyshire Championships.

Medal winners were; Ellenor Turner for 100m Backstroke (Gold); Oliver Ecob 100m Backstroke (Gold), 200IM (Silver), 50m Backstroke (Gold), 50m Butterfly (Silver), 100m Freestyle (Silver); Louis Ecob 50m Free (Bronze); Bronya O’Wellen 100m Fly (Bronze), Emily Braddock 50m Breaststroke (Gold), 200IM (Bronze), 100m Breaststroke (Gold); Hamish Thomson 200IM (Bronze); Charlie Boam 50m Backstroke (Bronze).

Buxton then returned to league action in the Crusader League, travelling through the snow to Market Drayton. Yet again PBs were broken just a week on from Macclesfield and debuts were made by Charlie Pearson, Finn Bothamley, Bethan Pollard & Flo Harris-Wood. The 12/U girls won all of their races including 50m Butterfly, 50m Freestyle, 4x50m Freestyle Relay & 4x50m Medley relay. The 10/U boys also had 4 wins out of 6. We ended the competition with an exciting cannon relay, a 8 swimmer team for double points and the swimmers performed amazingly by winning with almost a length’s lead. Buxton won the first round with 266 points, our second league win in a row. Head Coach Liam McWee said ‘This is an amazing result. The swimmers work so hard in training and it pays off each week. We came so close to cancelling due to weather but we are glad we managed to get there. To see the beaming smiles on all of our swimmers’ faces when we found out we won; it’s those moments we work for!’.

The club returned to action in Matlock to take on the second weekend of the Derbyshire County Championships. After a successful first weekend the team did not disappoint. A total of 30 races resulted in 24 new personal bests, 4 finals and club records broken. Liam McWee, Head Coach said: ‘This is an incredible achievement for the club, to take 13 swimmers to our county championships and for them all to PB, make finals and break records’.

Making their debut for the club at the counties were Chloe Montgomery-White & Seth Partridge. Finalists this week were Charlie Boam, Louis Ecob & Oliver Ecob.

Despite recent illnesses, Chloe Montgomery-White, Boris Holliday and Mia Stokes also managed to pull out brilliant races.

‘The Buxton swimmers have trained so hard leading up to this month and their hard work has paid off massively. They will have a few days rest and then it’s back to training hard for our next competition on March 10th’.

Buxton Swimming Club took a team of 13 swimmers to the first leg of the Derbyshire Counties at the Arc in Matlock last weekend and had some cracking results

48 races were swum in total of which 7 were finals.  35 personal bests were broken, mostly by 5-10 seconds.

Special mentions should go to:-

Louis Ecob who made the finals for 100m backstroke, 100m individual medley, 100m freestyle & 50m breaststroke

Charlie Boam who made the finals for 100m backstroke & 100 individual medley

Lauren Hurley (pictured) who made the finals for 100m butterfly + came away with 2 silver medals for 200m freestyle and 200m individual medley

For 8 of the swimmers it was their first Counties gala and they all did us proud with some massive pbs.  The atmosphere on poolside was electric – roll on next weekend – more results to follow!