Six Fins’ swimmers qualified to compete in the Scottish National Short Course Championships which were held at the Royal Commonwealth Pool, Edinburgh, from last Friday morning until Sunday evening.
This is the main event in the Scottish Short Course calendar and it attracted a very large entry from all over the UK, including many of this year’s Commonwealth Games Team.
With no age groups it was always going to be difficult for Fins’ swimmers to make it through to the finals so their main focus was to improve on their existing times which they did very successfully.
The top swimmer, and the youngest, for Fins was 13 year old Erin Taylor who finished in 26th place out of 84 swimmers in the 200m Butterfly. More significantly she was the highest placed 13 year old and a 6.77 second PB moves Erin from 3rd to top of the 13 year old Scottish Rankings and her time of 2 min. 27.32 seconds takes her 5.50 seconds ahead of the 2nd placed swimmer. As from 1 January she will top the 14 years rankings, as all swimmers move on a year, although she will not be 14 until August.
19 year old Arran Stowe finished in 27th place, out of 91 swimmers, in the 200m Breaststroke and his time of 2 min. 24.03 seconds gave him a 3.77 second PB.
Good PBs were also recorded by 16 year old Theo Goodfellow – 2.15 second off his 200m Breaststroke; 14 year old Neža Dolenc Luznar reduced her 200m Freestyle by 1.84 seconds; and 16 year old Caitlyn Dodds reduced her 200m Individual Medley by 1.60 seconds.
18 year old Euan Pate was the remaining swimmer to qualify. He only had one swim and unfortunately did not record a PB. However, he was just 1.03 seconds off the time he set at Linwood, in November, giving him his 2nd fastest time.