Members of the Chelmsford Swimming Club have reached the end of the Essex County Swimming Championships 2015 with an amazing 26 Essex County Champion winners within their swimming squad.

Swimmers train for up to 17 hours per week, often at 5.30 in the morning or late until 9.00 at night, looking for ways to shave valuable seconds off their times to become County, Regional or National champions.

All this hard work paid off when the competitive swimming season began with the Essex County Championships, which took place over 3 weekends in January and February at Basildon Sporting Village and Garon Park, Southend-on-Sea with 69 swimmers from Chelmsford Swimming Club qualifying for the event.

The first weekend saw Chelmsford swimmers becoming County Champions in six events, including Harry Mclagan, 12, in the 50m Backstroke, Amelia Barnetson, 15, in the 200m Breaststroke and saw the start of a winning streak for Charlie Boden with his first four gold medals.

This year also saw the Essex County Relays taking place at the same time as the individual age group events and the first day resulted in a silver medal for the girls in the BAGCAT (British Age Group CATegories) 200m freestyle relay.

The second weekend in Southend began with the longer distance swims and demonstrated the amazing stamina of the Chelmsford swimmers.

In the 400m Individual Medley there were three County Champions, Annabelle Kitching, 13, Charlie Boden, 14, and Tom Mclagan.

The girls in the 13 years age group were particularly strong this year across the full range of events and had five finishing in the top eight in the 400m Freestyle event (Scarlett Morine, Abbie Low, Ellie Runnalls, Tia Gardiner and Annabelle Kitching).

In the 800m freestyle event, they once again proved themselves as worthy winners, taking over the podium by winning all three medal positions with Annabelle Kitching ,13, becoming County Champion taking home the gold medal, Ellie Runnalls, 13, taking silver and Tia Gardiner, 13, bringing home the bronze. In addition, swimmer Natalie Wood also saw a silver medal come her way in the 800m freestyle, Megan Samuels, 14, and Tia Gardiner,13, won bronze in the 100m freestyle with Lauren Scott,13, and Amelia Barnetson, 15, winning hard fought silver medals in the 100m breaststroke event.

The boys swim the longer 1500m Freestyle distance and also delivered a great performance with eight Chelmsford swimmers placed in the top eight of their respective age groups and six medals won, including a silver medal for Ryan Mogford, 15, bronze for Owen Vaughan, 12, Gus Veasey and Sam Perks, 13, taking his overall total to six bronze medals.

It was also a great weekend for the Age 11/12 boys medley relay team, with swimmers Owen Vaughan, Jack Skerry, Harry Mclagan and Thomas Samuels delighted to win a gold medal in the team event.

The final weekend saw the last of the relay events and a gold medal for the BAGCAT girls 200m Individual Medley team (Tia Magrath, Megan Samuels, Rebecca Kitching and Abbie Low) which resulted in Chelmsford Swimming Club winning the trophy for the performance of all the girls BAGCAT teams across the combined events.

In addition, Chelmsford won a further nine gold, three silver and ten bronze medals at the final weekend. Charlie Boden finished the event on a high, becoming County Champion in the 200m backstroke, 100m Fly, 200m Individual Medley, 50m Fly and the 50m Freestyle.

Gold medals were also awarded to Tia Magrath, 14, in the 50m backstroke, Ryan Kelly, 16, the 200m Backstroke, Tia Gardiner, 13, the 200m Freestyle and Scarlett Morine, 13, the 50m Fly.

Essex County Swimming Association also used this weekend to announce that Essex had once again won the Junior Inter-County Championship for the East Region: Chelmsford Swimming Club swimmers Lauren Scott and Owen Vaughan were both selected to swim for the county, winning their respective individual events to help secure the title.

The main highlight of the event was the performance of Chelmsford swimmer Charlie Boden, who swept through the Championships; winning an amazing fourteen gold medals and one bronze medal.

This year has been his most successful to date, as not only has he become County Champion in the majority of the events he qualified to compete in, but he has also been offered a swimming scholarship from Plymouth College in Devon.

The college’s partnership with Plymouth Leander Swimming Club has developed it into Great Britain’s leading swimming programme, with some of the finest facilities in Europe, and is home to some of the sport’s brightest talents.

It will see Charlie training twice a day alongside such athletes as Commonwealth Champion Ben Proud, and double-Olympic gold medalist and world record-holder Ruta Meilutyte, whilst also studying for his GCSEs.

He started swimming at Braintree as an average 8 year old just out of swimming lessons, and became Essex Champion three years later.

When he moved to Chelmsford Swimming Club at the age of 12. Under the influence of head coach Sean Eveleigh, his swimming career really started to fly, Eveleigh’s no-nonsense approach guiding him to achieve14 national qualifying times, two national medals, and countless regional and county titles. Chelmsford and Plymouth clubs will continue to work together, with Charlie training with Chelmsford Swimming Club during his school holidays, however it does mean that this year was his last at the Essex County Championships and what a way to say his goodbyes.

By the end of the final weekend, Chelmsford Swimming Club were placed as one of the top three clubs in Essex out of the 24 clubs that entered.

They brought home over 80 medals and saw a total of 26 events where Chelmsford swimmers were announced as Essex County Champions, achieved numerous Regional qualifying times and most swimmers smashed their individual Personal Best times.

The club also saw four of their girls, in the 13 years age group, finish in the top 6 for overall performance out of the 70 competitors within their age group and had five boys finishing in the top 3 for their respective age group, including Charlie Boden, who was announced Top boy for the 4th consecutive year and set a new event record for 100m backstroke.

Although Chelmsford Swimming Club are sad to see him leaving, it is a great opportunity for Charlie and it would be fantastic to see a Chelmsford swimmer in the Olympics in years to come.

Now that the County Championships are over there is still no rest for the Chelmsford swimmers, as training begins in earnest for the next major event in the swimming calendar.

The Regional Championships take place in Luton and Norwich in April and May, swimming in the longer 50m pools.

With another couple of months for swimmers to gain qualifying times for the events (current numbers stand at 12 Youth and 19 BAGCAT qualifiers with more yet to add from the final weekend), Chelmsford Swimming Club will be continuing their rigorous training schedule and will be hoping to see all their hard work come to fruition with another stunning performance in the pool.

Full results can be found on the Essex County Swimming Association website: www.essexswimming.org.

With 69 swimmers qualifying from Chelmsford Swimming Club to take part in the Essex County Championships, there are too many swimmers to mention them all by name however, Chelmsford Swimming Club are proud of all the swimmers that qualified and took part in the event, won medals over the three weekends, achieved places in the finals or beat their own personal bests over the course of the three weekends.