Swimmers from the St Bede’s School and the aquatics club based at Upper Dicker travelled to Crawley on the 19th and 20th of March for the final weekend of the 2011 Sussex County Championships.  Whilst the squad is small compared to many of the other clubs in the county they finished the event well clear of all challengers scoring 575 championship points comfortably ahead of second placed Crawley Swimming Club who totalled 381 points.

St Bede’s highlights from the championships included two national qualifying times from Will Condron in the 50m and 100m freestyle as well as overall Open Championship victories from Andrew Horsfall- Turner (3 events), Jasmin Brennan (2 events) and Stephanie Ketley (1 event).  Landmark times were achieved by Will and Andrew as they both broke the two minute barrier for 200m freestyle.  In a similar vein Elliot Wood finished the 100m freestyle in 59.71 seconds to finish in under one minute for the first time.

Other age group winners were: Jade Pithers, Katherine Horsfall -Turner, Charlotte Chapmen, Eve Carless and Theo Hall.  The full squad including Cristina Richards, Ben Jones, Alex Fenwick, Emma Horsfall-Turner, William Brown, Harriet Lambourne, Eliot Wood, Bethany Tagg, Rose Stride and Jessica Brailey all contributed valuable points and swam numerous personal best times.

Head Coach, Kevin Ayers, was justifiably proud of the team performance in winning the overall championships for the first time and will soon have them back in hard training for events later in the season.