Tigersharks Dominant in Summer League Final
Tigersharks continued their dominance of their Summer League campaign on Saturday. Having not used any of their National Qualifiers in the first three rounds of the League Tigersharks were already in an unbeatable position going into round four. This show’s the strength and depth Tigersharks are building from the bottom up. The final saw Tigersharks win thirty-five of the fifty events and forty in the top two. With last years National Qualifiers swimming in the final round the team pulled together a fantastic effort. This was made more difficult as lane two ultimately was closed due to faulty blocks. Tigersharks found themselves swimming in lane one with the other teams in lanes three, four and five. This made no difference as the swimmers raced themselves rather than the other Teams. Team Captains: - Alex Lee & Kieron German collecting The Winning team Trophy (Pictured right).
Tigersharks superb Under 12 years boys won every individual race and both their relays. Craig Harris, Conor Keye, Daniel Jones and Sami Donmez were in superb form Under 12 years girls Rebecca Flack, Rebecca Cook, Momoko Takahashi & Rebecca Maddocks also proved to be a force to be reckoned with as they only dropped to 2nd place in one event out of six. Boys Under 16 years matched the younger boys with a clean sweep of all events. Matthew Magness, Tom Howitt, Kyle Gaskin and Natan Romano were in top form. While the Girls Under 16 years, Ella Luffman, Sophie Roberts, Emily Weston & Michaela Boniface with the help of 13 year old Aiko Takahashi swept to five out of six victories. The Open Boys were far too strong for the other teams as Alex Jones, Dean Williamson, Jacob Roberts, Kieron German and Sam Clayton simply cruised to victory in all six events. Alex Jones topped there performance as he also smashed the County record held by Andi Manley for 11 years in the 4x1L Individual Medley. The Open Girls were not quite as dominant but Sophie Hawkins easily strolled into first place in the 4x1L Individual Medley and 3L Frontcrawl as did Aiko Takahashi (only 13 years) in the 3L Backstroke. The Under 14 girls proved far too strong as a team for the competition as Aiko Takahashi, Freya Weston, Georgia Pearce and Georgie Manning cruised to wins in both relays with Aiko easily taking the individual Butterfly. The Under 14 years boys, Alex Eburne, Ben Edwards, Elliot Willoughby & Jake Hancock, found the going tough but managed to take the Medley relay win with a storming last leg from Hancock.
A superb effort by all the Tigersharks swimmers so early in the session saw Tigersharks with a win on the night by a huge margin and an overall win of 141 points clear margin from second place Chippenham.
Points on the night were as follows:
| Tigersharks 171 | Chippenham 125 | Corsham 117 | Swindon Dolphin 88 |
Final points for the division for 2010:-
| Tigersharks 637 | Chippenham 496 | Corsham 447 | Swindon Dolphin 413 |
The results means that next year will see the winning team, Tigersharks, move up to division one and the team in last place will move down to Division three.
A great start to the new season for Tigersharks.
Tigersharks also said farewell to three of their National Squad swimmers as they move onto university this week. Alex Jones starts at Leeds University and City of Leeds swimming club, Dean Williamson starts at Plymouth University and Plymouth Leander swimming club and Kieron German starts his studies with Plymouth Marjon and University swimming. Very best of luck to you all, we will miss you.
