Swimming
UK Schools GamesThe listing was posted by Scottish Disability Sport
The UK School Games are a multi-sport event for school age athletes. The Games are designed to replicate the feel of events like the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Launched in 2006 in Glasgow, the Games will be held every year until the London Paralympic Games in 2012. Every year there will be an opening and closing ceremony and a Games Village for the athletes.
The 2007 Games were held in August in Coventry and five SDS swimmers competed for the Scotland East and North team alongside the best mainstream swimmers in the country.
Jennifer Somerville (Lothian Disability Sport) and Stefan Hoggan (Disability Sport Fife) have been identified as potential internationals of the future. Both have recently been inducted into the SDS Athlete Academy. Jennifer competed in the 100m Freestyle and 100m Backstroke taking bronze in both and going one better than her fourth place finishes at the 2006 Games. Stefan has been struggling with injury in recent weeks but performed well. He won silver in the 200m Individual Medley, just missing out on gold by less than one tenth of a second, and bronze in the 50m Freestyle with his fastest time ever in a long course pool.
Stefan's Fife team mate Arran Ritchie made his first appearance in a UK event and swam to two fourth places. Arran has made significant improvement this year and again demonstrated that his training is paying dividends. His time in the 100m Freestyle was an improvement of 3 secs.
The two visually impaired Dundee swimmers, Lyndsey Hands and Erin Goldstraw completed the line up for SDS and both had good results. Lyndsey won the first medal of the day for her team, a bronze in her favoured 100m Breaststroke, again improving on her performance at the 2006 Games. Erin had to wait until later in the day to make her debut and was pleased to swim 2 personal best times for bronze medals in both the 100m Butterfly and 200m Individual Medley.
Overall the swimmers returned with 7 medals, a big improvement on the 3 medals won in 2006. All bar one of the 5 swimmers will be eligible to compete again in the Games next year in Bristol and Bath. The challenge for SDS will be to find other swimmers for the future. The North and the West of Scotland team sadly had no representatives this year.