The Scottish School finals took place in East Kilbride over the weekend and the swimmers from ELST made the short journey to the West to contest for top spot in their age groups.  The Schools is a National event, where the swimmers compete against the best from across the country.  There are heat events held before the turn of the year and the fastest 12 from each age group qualify for the final.

 

The ELST swimmers got the day off to a bang with a Silver medal for Iona Wilson in the 13/14 100m Butterfly.  This was quickly followed by a series of Bronze medals, with Edward Alsop in the 15/16 100m Butterfly, Sean Craigmile in the 13/14 200m Backstroke, Luke Porteous in the 13/14 200m Backstroke and Calum Peebles in the 12/U 50m Backstroke.  We also had a number of near misses with Edward finishing 4th in the 15/16 200 IM, Christen Russell finishing 5th in the 15/16 200m Breaststroke and Ben Williamson, who is a member of the Development pathway at ELST, finishing 8th in the 12/U 50m Backstroke.

 

The afternoon brought a Gold rush with 3 of our swimmers coming away with the top prize.  Stefan Krawiec continued his recent form with a Gold medal in the 12/U 50m Butterfly.  Stefan swam an impressive race and in the process setting a new Scottish National 11 Years Long Course Record, finishing in a time of 29.59, breaking the old mark by 0.36.  Grace Courtney picked up our second Gold of the meet, again in the 12/U 50m Butterfly, in an impressive new personal best time.  Luke Hornsey rounded off the medal haul with a Gold in the 12/U 50m Freestyle, with Luke like Grace and Stefan setting a really positive personal best time.

 

Apart from our 3 Gold medallists, we had a very busy afternoon of racing, with Eilidh Armstrong making the 12/U 50m Butterfly final, finishing 6th.  Meagan Porteous contested the 200m/100m Freestyle finishing 6th and 7th in the 13/14 age group respectively.  Eilish Segall also racing in the 13/14 age group, taking to the pool in the 100m Breaststroke and 200m Freestyle, finishing 10th and 12th.  Aiden Ballantyne competed in the 13/14 200m Freestyle and 100m Freestyle, finishing 9th in both events.  Luke Porteous took to the pool again, this time in the 200m Freestyle, touching in 10th place.  Christen Russell narrowly missed out on a medal position, finishing in 4th place in the 15/16 100m Breaststroke.  Sean Craigmile’s final race of the weekend saw him competing in the 15/16 100m Backstroke, finishing in 11th.  The swim teams final race of the competition was the 13/14 200 IM, where Iona Wilson battled to a 5th place finish.

 

These results show good progression from last year, where we came home with 5 medals against the 8 the swimmers claimed this year. This year’s team was significantly bigger than previously and spread across a wider range of age groups.

 

Bruce Halloran, ELST Head Coach said, “This was our first competition of the Long Course season, and the results are very encouraging.  We now set our sights on the East District finals which will be taking place this weekend at the Royal Commonwealth Pool, Edinburgh”.