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Southern Counties Championships - Bagcat (June 12th and 13th 2004)
Held at Crystal Palace 50m Pool (long course)

Mark St Clare swam the race of his life when he easily beat the National Qualifying Time (NQT) for the 100m freestyle. Whilst extremely close on the Saturday he missed the NQT of 59.44 narrowly by swimming 59.99 in the 14yrs 100m freestyle race. On the Sunday his relay teammates of Tom Burley, Louis George and Phil Noone encouraged him to swim first leg where he achieved a life best of 59.16 (tbc) easily beating the NQT time. Only the first leg of relays are permitted to be counted as personal bests.

Harlow sent a total of 9 Penguins who swam against the cream of Britain's Southern based swimmers. All of our swimmers had to achieve difficult qualifying times in designated meets then compete against like minded determined swimmers from 40+ other clubs. Mark was not our only success story. Kaz Melvin's incredible string of success continued with a well deserved 5th place in the 200m breaststroke final, 4th in the 200 backstroke final and  7th in the 200m IM final.  Tom Burley also achieved 8th in the 100m fly final (well done Tom - a Southern Counties finalist last year as well!!) 

Jodie Want and Ruby Groome both made 75 mile round journeys to compete in relay races - both performed excellently with our girl relay teams coming an incredible 10th and 14th in the 4x 100m freestyle and medley relays respectively. Our girls would have finished even higher if other teams had not joined forces choosing the fastest swimmers between them - well done girls. 

Louis George come 5th in the boys 200m back - well done  to all the boys. Special mention also to Louise Kendall who swam the best Alan Mitchell has ever seen in the 200im and hard luck to Cydney Newman who despite swimming bravely still cant quite manage that NQT! - Last chance this weekend - fingers crossed 

Legend "the bed breaker"