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Surrey third at BUCS Team Swimming Champs

21 March 2011

The University of Surrey Swimming Team completed a successful first campaign in the British University Swimming Championships (BUCS) team competition over the weekend finishing 5th overall in Division 3 at the National Team Finals in Loughborough. In the process the University of Surrey scored 5 well earned BUCS points.

To make it through to the finals the squad had to achieve a top three spot in the Southern Region preliminary round. This was accomplished in February at Surry Sports Park in a gala that saw the team competing for the first time and not only securing a National Finals place but also gaining promotion next year into Division 2.     

The ladies 4 x 50m Medley relay team of Kristina Bormann, Jenny Cussell, Claire Lou-Moore and Charlotte Larner got proceedings off to a great start with a third place finish and this was closely followed by Emily Orchard's win in the women's 100m individual medley.  

The top individual performance on the men's side came from Captain James Godwin in the 200m front crawl finishing second in an impressive 1:58.8, which coincided with the half way point of the gala.  At this stage Surrey were in 6th place trailing Leicester by 9 points.  

From here on in though the team showed great spirit chipping away at the margin and giving themselves a shot at 5th place with the last two front crawl relays to swim.  First up were the ladies who narrowly missed out on overhauling the point’s margin as they were touched out in a close finish for 3rd between 3 teams.  Ultimately they finished 5th but that was still a place ahead of Leicester and two points gained. Last up were the men who again were involved in a very tight finish between 3 teams.  This time though with Josh Wreford putting in a storming last leg, Surrey took 3rd and with Leicester back in 7th place, 5th place overall was Surrey's by 2 points.

It was a great day, superbly run by the hosts Loughborough and a real team performance by Surrey. Every member of the ten of team made a massive contribution.  The aim next year has to be to return to the finals and this time pick up a top 3 finish and more BUCS points.

Mark Garfoot, Performance Sport Manager at Surrey Sports Park, said, "The swimming team have worked tremendously hard with our partner coaches at Guildford City Swimming Club this year, and fully deserve their top five finish. Swimming is one of the University of Surrey's new performance sports and we will be looking to continually improve our student squad and achieve even more next time around."