The National County Championship took place at Ponds Forge Sheffield weekend over the weekend 1st/2nd October. 

The Devon Team were excited to take part and start their campaign to regain the title they won in 2019……….and  we were putting forward an extremely strong team.

The weekend started early on Saturday morning with the long coach drive to our accommodation for the Saturday night. After supper, with the kit distributed, it was a reasonably early night for all as we had an early start in the morning. 

Breakfast was at 07.00 as our warm-up slot was 9.45……. but this was not ideal as racing was not due to start until 1.15!

Devon were  competing in Division 1 along with 19 other teams while in Division 2, 17 teams were taking part.

Just before the start of racing, team captains Leah Whittaker and Riccardo Lucarelli represented Devon in the team parade. 

 

During the event, Devon swimmers produced some excellent swims:

 

In the individual events, Flawia Kamzol gained first place in the girls 14/15 years 100 m butterfly (1.00.02) and later on in the afternoon was just tipped into second place in the 100m  freestyle (56.76).

 

There were also first places for Leah Whittaker (1.00.99)  and Matthew Ward (55.37) in the 16/17 years 100m backstroke, Hollie Widdows in the 16/17 100 m butterfly (1.01.20) and Fergus Thomson (57.07) in the 16/17 100 m backstroke.

 

 

Erin Little took second place in the 16/17 freestyle (54.98)  as did  two of our relay teams, the 14/15 years men’s medley team of Fergus Thomson, Stanley Partridge, Johari Masinde and Abduljabar Adama and the women’s 16 /17 years medley team of Leah Whittaker, Claire Heullou, Hollie Widdows and Erin Little.     

 

A special mention must be made of Reuben Murphy, swimming in the boys 12/13 years breaststroke and coming away with an amazing 5 second PB!

 

 Throughout the afternoon there was great team spirit and many excellent swims but unfortunately we had two team DQs which put us further down the results table then we really should have been.

 

In the end Kent proved to be just too strong for us this year and we settled for a very creditable fourth place.

 

So, well done and congratulations to the whole team .

 

ABDULJAMAR ADAMA          GABRIELLE IDLE BEAVERS   

Lotte Declerck            Toby Nakamura Drew

Lily Green               Sebastian Grenado

Claire Heullou                      Anna Huddy

Flawia Kamzol                Ellie Kennington

Blythe Kinsman                  Erin Little

Riccardo Lucarelli          Thomas Marshall

Johari Masinde           Alex Mason

Reuben Murphy           Arun Oelkers

Stanley Partridge               Dylan Reeve

Lacey Roberts            Lotta Schulze

Charles Simpson       Fergus Thomson

Hermance Vellaud           Leah Whittaker

Matthew Ward        Hollie Widdows

Lisa Zhou

The full results for Division 1 can be found here:

Division one live results

 

 

Thank you to those officials who gave up their weekend to support the team: Lynn Rayment, team manager, Alison King technical official and coaches Richard Beard, Rikki Morris and Louis Joyce.

We were also grateful for the support of the Devon County President Jane Brimacombe, and the Vice President Esther Rookes who also travelled with the team..

 

Sue Haigh

 

Devon Team Manager 

OLY