On the weekend of the 19th November, the Blues swim team and a few seconds made the road trip of a lifetime up to Sheffield to compete in the annual BUCS Speedo Championships, the biggest competition of the British university calendar. For this early in the season, we weren’t expecting any huge times or swims, but how wrong we were. We took 7 cars to get the whole team up to Sheffield over the course of Friday, making sure those swimming that evening were up in plenty of time to prep. The trip was off to a strong start when the people’s publicity officer, Raphael McMahon, made one post and then forgot what his role was and ended up belting out J Biebs for the whole journey. While this delightful choral effort was occurring, our very own open water captain, Yoshi Eschen, proceeded to smash out a 1500m in a Blues record time and a new PB. Over the course of the weekend a total of 36 personal bests, 18 blues times and 4 university records were achieved. Theo Cannon came second in the B Final of the 50 Fly in a time of 24.56 and our Captain oh Captain, Ellie O’Keeffe smashed out a 1.02.74 in the 100 Fly, both qualifying for Nationals! Alongside this Hugo Bellamy also qualified for Nationals on the 100 Fly and Thomas Woolley qualified on the 100 Free! Overall a massive success for the team and we are so proud of all of them. Also big thank you to Chris for coming along to coach us at BUCS for the first time in CUSWPC history, it was great having him around and had a big impact.
Lots of Love,
Ellie and Alfie xx
Blues Swim Captains