Press Release

Top points for a positive Plymouth team

Monday, August 4 2008

Throughout the five days of competition at the asa National Youth Championships 2008, positive comments were freely flowing by all swimmers from Plymouth Leander about their training programme and coaches. With their distinctive royal blue t-shirts with yellow writing, a real presence was felt by the South West team in and out of the water with their swims resulting in them being awarded top overall club, top boys club and fourth in the top girls club award.

Plymouth Leander Swimming Club entered into formal arrangements only two and a half years ago with Plymouth College to be able to offer a comprehensive swim training programme without swimmers having to their sacrifice education. Approximately fifty three swimmers from Plymouth qualified for the asa National Age Group and Youth Championships 2008, with almost fifty percent of those being Plymouth locals and the remainder being boarders at Plymouth College. 

Jon Rudd, Director of Swimming at Plymouth College and head coach at Plymouth Leander said "the programme has got a lot bigger much quicker than we expected and winning the top overall club and top boys team is a fantastic achievement and testament to all the swimmers who have pulled together as a team."

If a Plymouth Leander swimmer was competing the noise levels in Ponds Forge certainly increased a few decibels. If one of them won it was not uncommon to see team mates rushing over to congratulate. Rudd explained "at Plymouth College we have swim specific boarding houses which are run by ex-swimmers, strength and conditioning coaches etc so the swimmers go to school, eat, sleep, and train together and the boarding house managers are able to feed back into weekly meetings how the swimmers are doing.

There is a very strong team bond and an emotional bond between them all. Here in Sheffield a number of the swimmers siblings, parents, grandparents and friends have come to support. We are all staying at the University and as we are at the pool training and doing heats the parents are taking it in turn to do the shopping and cooking."

A number of swimmers described it as "like a family" with many wanting to thank Jon Rudd and Amanda Booth (head coach and assistant head coach) for their support and hard work. One emotional swimmer also wanted to thank Lindsey Dunn (performance coach and strength and conditioning coach) "she has encouraged me throughout the year and given me the confidence to achieve and go further, especially when I thought I couldn't."

It has not been plain sailing for all the Plymouth Leander swimmers, despite their national success. Of particular note is fourteen year old Achieng Ajulu-Bushell who won three national titles. During her Christmas vacation she went to Kenya and was caught up in the political unrest and unable to leave the house or train for several days. Fortunately for her this does not appear to have hampered her swimming at these Championships.

Plymouth Leander finished the Championships with a win in both the male and female 4x100m Medley relay.

The Top Girls club went to Ealing who won the women's 4x100m freestyle and women's 4x200m freestyle.