KENDAL swimmers kicked off the club championships with two long distance evens at the town's Leisure Centre centre.

The club gave an outstanding display of their skills during a very challenging 400m freestyle swim, where each participant was praised for their performance.

The young swimmer’s skill, power, technique, and tactics were brought fully into play by both girls and boys especially the younger swimmers, who for some it was a first attempt.

In the girls opening heats nine of them all reached times under the six-minute mark.

Off the blocks there were some superb starts and transitions which brought them performances to be proud of, amongst them.

Elissa Kinley, Alecia McClure, Evelyn Kinnear, and Kara Van Der Merve who all gave great accounts of themselves. More was to follow as the bulk of the Club’s Senior girls began to pull out all the stops, quickly settling into their rhythm and picking up a pace from where they could make their challenges in the final stages.

Swimmers like Emma, Duxbury, Kayleigh Craggs, Kate Collin, Eve Murray, Evie Sellers, and the Bottomley sisters all challenged to better their skills and reach qualifying times and all recorded times under five minutes charging through the pressure zone, in blanket finishes.

However, the final result brought about the most exciting race of the evening which had Molly Moran and Rosemary Swallow meeting head-to-head in which they showed both great techniques coupled with their super talent.

Off to a great start it became obvious both were evenly matched and neither would leave each other’s shoulder.

Each challenge received an immediate response so that into the final length the girls-ere still together and even producing a supreme effort and digging deep into their reserves saw them hit the finish in 4:59 with Moran taking the title by hundredths of a second with Swallow runner up and Emma Duxbury in Bronze.

Then came the turn of the boys and again the results were to prove beneficial, especially following the loss of so much training, but well done to all those youngsters who would normally have stuck to sprints and middle-distance races Swimmers like Leo Murray, Jake Smith, Jarno Stander, Elliot Dart, and George Kinnear all emerged with times of six minutes. Then came the big guns all giving their best challenging for honours.

The leaders all put on brilliant performances, maintaining a devastating pace and challenges coming from all sides. All in the mix were Mathew Gibson, Michael Caton, Mathew Foster, Adam Stansfield, Lennon Bell, Evan Dart, and James Escolme.

Fresh from his County, successes Escolme was the obvious favourite, however Dart, Bell and Stansfield were determined the race would be no cakewalk.

Length after length they worked hard surging forward and challenging Escolme at every turn.

In the last length Escolme moved up a gear and forged ahead of Dart to take the Championship in a time of 4:31.06 ahead holding off the fast-finishing Dart and Bell.