Six South Lincs swimmers competed at the East Midlands Short Course Regional Championships in Nottingham over the weekend of October 31 to November 2.
This meet is one of the highest levels of competition that the swimmers will compete in, and it is usually attended by Olympic swimmers from Loughborough and Repton.
This year was no exception with Olympic silver medallist Luke Greenbank and Olympic bronze medallist Jacob Whittle in attendance.
This meet has no age group awards, just seniors at 17/over and juniors at 16/under which means the swimmers really are competing against the best in the region.
Matteo Monaco had a great weekend, claiming new personal bests in five of his six events.
Monaco started with the 100m breaststroke and was over three seconds quicker than his previous best, finishing in 14th place.
In the 50 backstroke Monaco took nearly a second off his PB with an 11th place finish.
He then continued with a 12th place finish in both the 200m IM and the 200m backstroke with a three-second PB in both events.
On the final day, Monaco then set another new PB in the 100m backstroke with a 14th place finish before finishing his weekend with a ninth place finish in the 200 breaststroke, narrowly missing out on a final.
Hannah Bruce had her best competition weekend in 18 months and showed she is back to form after an illness hit season last year.
Bruce started with a small PB in her 100m freestyle to finish in 22nd place, then followed that up with her best swim since January 2024 in the 400 freestyle to finish in 25th place.
More personal bests followed in the 100m IM and the 50m freestyle finishing in 17th place in both events, and placing her as the top Lincolnshire female in the 50 freestyle.
Bradley Holland competed in his favoured sprint events of the 50 freestyle and fly, and the 100m fly.
All his times were within 0.2 seconds of his previous best times, and Holland swam in the same heat as Olympian Whittle in the 50m fly, taking a 19th place finish and placing as the top Lincolnshire swimmer in the event.
Francesco Monaco qualified as a 13-year-old in the 400m IM and was one of the youngest swimmers in the competition. A new short course PB followed with a time of 5:04.99 to place him 21st in the junior rankings.
Will Vere had a fantastic swim in the 400m IM. He only qualified two weeks ago with a swim of 5:15.04 taking three seconds off his previous best. Vere then swam a 5:12.16 in the competition to lower his PB by another three seconds to finish 30th.
Kieran Lucy also had a fantastic swim in the 800 freestyle, setting a new time of 9:35.60, which is 18 seconds quicker than his time at Counties earlier this year. This swim put him in 26th place.
Head coach Adrian Garlike said: “The SC Regionals is one of the highest levels of competition that our swimmers compete in during the year, and each one of our six swimmers performed to the best of their ability against the very best swimmers across the region.
“Not only did they gain new personal bests but also showed intelligence in their race strategy and implementation.”
