Alnwick Dolphins in the medals at prestigious regional championships

The young Alnwick Dolphins who competed at the North East Regional Championships. Picture: Alnwick Dolphins

The NERs are the pinnacle of regional swimming and cover Northumberland, Durham and all of Yorkshire.

The competition is staged over three weekends in Sunderland and Sheffield and includes the quickest swimmers from the North East.

Alnwick had seven representatives in the age group category (11 to 14-year-olds) and one in the open (15 and above) category.

In the highly competitive open championships in Sheffield, Megan Park competed in the 50m freestyle and 100m backstroke.

In the age group competition, Matilda Wilson was one the youngest swimmers to qualify for the 100m freestyle and 200m backstroke.

She swam really well in both events and her 1:11:52 in the 100m freestyle was a new personal best time and club record.

In his second NERs, Andrew Batley qualified for four events – all the breaststroke swims as well as the 200m individual medley.

Tom Robinson and Felicity Oliva both represented Alnwick in the 100m backstroke, narrowly missing a place in the finals.

The rapidly improving Finn Orr had a good championship, qualifying for the 200m, 400m and 800m freestyle, and setting personal best times in all events.

Sandy Brown, fresh off some good swims in the Scottish Nationals, qualified in a number of events, including 50m, 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m freestyle, 100m backstroke and 200 individual medley.

He qualified for several finals, but the pinnacle of the event for him was claiming a brilliant bronze in the 200m freestyle in a superb time of 2:13:07.

The club’s final representative was Harriet Oldfield.

Harriet has been in good form of late, with her swim times leaving her among the best 14-year-olds in Britain.

She continued this form into the NERs where she took bronze in the 100m freestyle, silver in the 50m freestyle and then, on a quite fantastic last weekend, won gold in both the 50m butterfly, by 0.01 seconds, and 100m butterfly.

These swims have left her firmly in contention for a place at the British Championships in the summer with the fastest 24 swimmers in Britain qualifying.

Alnwick ended the championships 10th in the medal table, a remarkable achievement considering they were up against big city clubs such as Leeds and Sheffield that regularly produce international swimmers.