The Harefield Academy swimmers can boast huge successes from their recent competition at Plymouth Leander last weekend.

 

Individually, Lauren O’Connor (Year 7) achieved outstanding success collecting 5 gold medals, 2 silver and 1 bronze in her events along with being awarded as the top female athlete from all of the female competitors aged 11 and over at the Plymouth event. Lauren’s performance was even more remarkable as she achieved 6 personal best times from the 8 events in which she competed.

 

Lauren

 

Lauren, like our other swimmers trains 8 times a week. A morning session will see the swimmers in the pool at 5.20 a.m. and emerging at 6.50 a.m. in time to come to school. On some days, the morning swim and school is then followed by a 2 hour evening pool session, then home and bed!

 

Lauren definitely thinks that all of her hard work is worth it and having just missed out on the nationals this year (0.6 secs off the 100m backstroke time) is now focusing to achieve her national times next year.

 

 

Daisy Fraser (Year 9), another of our swimmers with great potential managed to knock a massive 3 seconds off her personal best time for the 200m freestyle event. Her new personal best for this event is 2 min. 20 secs. Daisy also competed in the 50m. butterfly, backstroke (another personal best time), breaststroke and freestyle as well as the 100m. freestyle and butterfly.

 

Daisy

 

Another up and coming swimmer is Jordan Sexton (Year 8). Jordan competed in a total of 11 races at the weekend in Plymouth achieving personal best times in 7 of them! The distances varied between 50m and 400m and the strokes included freestyle, butterfly, backstroke and an individual medley. He was most pleased with his 220m butterfly performance and like the other swimmers will continue training for the nationals next year.

 

Jordan

 

Competing in the 13-14 year old age group, Year 8 student Leighton Jones achieved a bronze medal in the 200m butterfly with a personal best time of 2 min. 37 secs. Not content with one personal best time, Leighton went on to achieve personal bests in the 200m backstroke and 100m breaststroke.

 

Leighton

 

Although swimming for a different club, Leighton’s older sister, Annabel Jones (Year 10) used the Plymouth event to gain some times for the 50m and 100m breaststroke. She achieved personal best times in both events, making the final of the 100m. breaststroke and swimming the distance in 1min. 26 secs.

 

Annabel

 

Congratulations to all of our swimmers. We look forward to celebrating even greater achievements next year!