On the 4th April, the swimmers at Sedgefield 75 swimming club held their own fundraising event for children in Ukraine by doing what they do best – swimming. 23 young swimmers gathered sponsorship to see how many lengths of the Newton Aycliffe pool they could swim in a 40-minute period. The children themselves had come up with the idea and were determined to get in as many lengths as they could, to maximise the funds raised. Everyone did themselves and the group effort proud in totting up an enormous number of lengths and raising well over £2000 for UNICEF’s Children of Ukraine fund.
The regional swimming championships took place across the country over two weekends in April and May. England is split into eight swimming regions, the North East region covering Yorkshire and Northumbria. Two versions of the championships take place, the age group for 12-14 year olds held at the John Charles Centre in Leeds and the open championships with youth (16/under) and senior categories held at Ponds Forge in Sheffield.
Two swimmers achieved the tough qualifying times for the age groups with Emma Price entering eight events and Filip Wilczynski five. Qualifying heats were held during the day for early evening finals sessions to decide the medals. Filip managed to qualify for all his five finals and picked up three medals, bronzes in 100m backstroke and 50m butterfly – where there was the unusual occurrence of three swimmers sharing bronze as they all posted the same time! It was in 50m backstroke that Filip struck gold and took the title.
Emma got into five of seven possible finals and won two silvers, in 400m freestyle and in 200m individual medley with a good PB.
In between the two weekends at Leeds were the Open Championships where again two swimmers took part. Alex Boyer swam 800m freestyle where he took over a second from his PB and Emma Price competed again and swam two individual events, 100m freestyle and 400m individual medley. She qualified for the medley final with a five-second PB but then went five seconds faster again in the final to gain a bronze despite still being 13 and swimming against 16-year-olds.
Emma was also selected to represent Northumberland and Durham in three relay teams at the open event and she played her part in a third-placed finish in the 4 x 200m freestyle team.