West Norfolk Swimming Club traveled to Peterborough on Saturday 10th December for the third and final round of the 2022 edition of the National Arena Swimming League’s East Midlands Premier Division.
Heading into the final fixture, Sarah Vanderloo’s squad sat eighth in the twenty-four team league table – meaning they would be contesting the ‘B’ Final alongside seventh placed Lincoln Pentaqua and Lincoln Vulcans, ‘B’ teams from the City of Peterborough and City of Cambridge, and Bedford’s Modernians SC – whom occupied places nine through twelve in the standings.
West Norfolk got off to a flying start with Sarah O’Brien and Nathan Wells contesting the opening Women’s and Men’s 200 Metre Individual Medley, as they have done in all Arena League fixtures this season. Both won their events, giving the Purple Army a maximum haul of 12 points from 12 leading into the opening relays.
The relay events had risked being a chink in the armour, testing the strength in depth of a team weakend by a number of illness affected absences.
However, West Norfolk emerged from the opening run of relays broadly unscaved, with two second places, a third and a fourth giving seventeen points from twenty-four – the most of any team other than Lincoln Pentaqua who narrowly missed out on a clean sweep with three wins and one second place.
As the evening’s main run of individual events got underway, strong and steady point scoring came West Norfolk’s way with six podium finishes from the fifteen races leading up to the Final’s halfway point.
Polly Anderson took second place in the Girls’ 11 Years’ 50M Backstroke before a run of three top-three’s in a row.
This saw Eloise Collins place third in the Girls’ 13 Years’ 100M Breaststroke before Joshua Jones dominated the corresponding boys event to win by a margin of greater than three seconds. Finally Erin Woodrow repeated Collins’ feat in the Girls’ 15 Years’ 100M Backstroke.
The Men’s 100M Butterfly saw a second place finish courtesy of Joe Wells, a placing matched by Jamie Wilson shortly afterwards in the Boys’ 13 Years’ 100M Backstroke.
The second half of the evening proved to be more fruitful for West Norfolk, with Nathan Wells scoring a win in the first race past the halfway mark – Men’s 100M Backstroke.
Wilson then took victory in the Boys’ 13 Year’s 100M Butterfly to kickstart a real run of success for those in Purple with Woodrow following up immediately with a third place in the Girls’ 15 Years’ 100M Freestyle.
The pairing of O’Brien and Freddie Laws locked out the Open Age Group 100M Breaststroke events – both winning by significantly healthy margins before Ruby Baxter’s third place in the Girls’ 11 Years’ 50 M Freestyle.
Jones took another victory in the 100M Freestyle for the Boys’ 13 Years’ category, Pemberley Hornigold a third place in the Girls’ 15 Years’ 100M Breaststroke and Rhys Burrell a second in the equivalent boys event.
Nathan Wells then sealed his individual hat trick of wins with first place in the Men’s blue-riband 100M Freestyle before proceedings moved on to the closing relays.
Those saw a third place for the 13 Years’ 4 x 50M Freestyle before one last West Norfolk victory in the final event of the night – the Open Age Group 4 x 50M Freestyle.
With all said and done, West Norfolk found themselves in second place on the night with 162 points, 33 shy of Lincoln Pentaqua’s total of 195.
This meant a final league placing of eighth in the league table, unchanged from West Norfolk’s position at the conclusion of the previous round.
Final standings – East Midlands Premier Division – B Final – Peterborough
City of Lincoln Pentaqua – 195 points
West Norfolk – 162 points
City of Peterborough ‘B’ – 150 Points
City of Cambridge ‘B’ – 146 points
Lincoln Vulcans – 134 points
Modernians – 92 points
