Crawley Town Life Saving Club enjoy another record-breaking start to the season

The team, comprising of one youth, one lady, four men, together with four female and one male masters, convincingly won 21 gold, 4 silver and 1 bronze medals.

On this occasion, Crawley Town could not field a ladies relay team which cost them the Open Overall Shield, a title they have won a record six times previously.

Crawley Town’s top performer was a young GBR hopeful, Asier Lopez, who took all five male individual titles in eye-opening personal best (PB) times in the boys 16-17 years age group.

Asier also helped the men’s relay team comprising Martin Schofield, Alex Jackson and Jack Sadberry, achieve bronze in the 4 x 50m Rescue Medley.

Crawley Town’s most impressive performance came in the men’s 100m Manikin Carry with fins where Jack (both a GBR and English International) led from the start, to lower his own British record by 0.74 seconds, to set it at a World class time of 47.13 seconds.

Jack also took a silver medal in the 50m Manikin Carry, showing he has a lot more to offer GBR besides finning.

Crawley’s only Open female competitor was Emily Goodwin, who is also an English International competitor. She can consider herself very unlucky to be beaten into silver medal position by just 0.02 seconds in the 12.5m Line throw.

Unlucky, because Emily’s only option was to use a Crawley Town master as her subject, who sadly was not able to kick as well as her much younger counterparts.

The second British record went to Crawley Town’s ladies masters team, comprising Donna Wickens, Jennifer Amos, Vanessa Eagland and Marsha Bayliss-Cutler, who like Jack, broke their previous British record by 8.96 seconds when achieving a time of 2:00.06 in the 4 x 25m Manikin relay.

Individually, Donna also won two gold medals in her favoured 50m Manikin Carry and 100m Rescue Medley events for which she holds both current British 50+ age group records.

Likewise, Marsha took gold in the 40-44 age group 50m Manikin Carry event.

Vanessa won a silver and bronze in the 55-59 age group 50m Manikin Carry and 100m Manikin tow with fin respectively.

Marsha and Vanessa then teamed up to win a Line throw gold in the female masters 40-44 age group, and similarly, Jennifer paired up with Donna, to also win gold in the 40-44 female masters age group.

Cheered on by his proud family and competing in his first swimming competition since the age of 14, Crawley Town’s only male master, Phillip Marsh, finished a creditable 7th in both the 40-44 age group 50m Manikin Carry and 100m Manikin Tow with fins events.

Crawley Town competitors are now excited at the prospect of the next National Pool competition, RLSS National Speed Lifesaving Championships 2024, being held for the first time in the new Sandwell Aquatics Centre near Birmingham (built for the 2022 Commonwealth Championships) on 23 and 24 March 2024. Speaking of which, Crawley Town competitors will be hoping to return to Swansea in 2025 as part of a national team competing in the Commonwealth Lifesaving Championships.

If you want to be part of this exciting sport, please come along, as Phil did, and join us on a Tuesday evening at K2 between 8.00 to 10.00pm.