The growing profile of Exmouth Swimming Club within competitive swimming has once again been demonstrated with another record year for club swimmers reaching Swim England’s South-West Regional Championships. Ten of the club’s young swimmers have been invited to participate over weekends during May, having achieved the required, and very challenging, qualifying times.  This is more than 3 times the number from the previous year.

Exmouth Swimming Club has seen further success at this year’s Devon Championships, exceeding the club’s previous best, with the junior and youth swimmers gaining 17 medals, including 4 golds. To even enter the championships, held over various weekends in January and February, swimmers needed to have achieved qualifying times at other official events throughout last year. The club saw more junior swimmers qualify this year than previous. Impressively, Exmouth swimmers reached the finals in around half the races that they entered.

Picture: Rosalyn, aged 11 who won two gold medals for 200m Individual Medley and 200m Butterfly

​Swimmers, coaches and volunteers from Exmouth Swimming Club have been able to experience Olympic and Paralympic level training during a recent visit by senior coaches from Aquatics GB, the governing body, for Olympic and Paralympic swimming, Para Swimming, diving, artistic swimming, water polo, and open water in Great Britain.  The unique opportunity saw 5 members of the coaching and management team visit the Exmouth club to run training, coaching and workshop sessions.

During the day, coaches from the club were able to spend time with Jacquie Marshall, Performance Pathway Lead for Para Swimming, to brush up on the most up to date techniques to support performance swimmers in their training and development.  At the club’s evening training sessions, the junior and youth swimmers received a special strength and conditioning land training session with the Head of Physical Performance & Support Science and Medicine Lead, Daniel Waddingham.  In his role, Daniel has overseen the physical development of many of GB’s Olympic and Paralympic gold medallists.
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After an intense physical session, the swimmers were back in the pool being coached by Jacquie to develop their competitive swimming, using similar training techniques as the UK’s top swimmers.

​On one of the hottest weekends of the year so far, our swimmers made the journey to the Plymouth Life Centre to complete in the aptly named, Devonport Summer Sizzler. And it was certainly a hot and fast weekend, with the swimmers on fire, taking home 15 Gold medals, 5 Silver medals and 9 Bronzes!

From swimmers as young as 9 competing for the first time, to those more experienced older swimmers, every swimmer swam at least 1 race with a PB. Head Coach Rob was understandably delighted with all their performances.

The names on many club records were also melted away, with Liberty Moore smashing 9 records in the 10 year old girls section. Niamh O'Connor broke the 200IM girls 11 year old record, Elsie Minto broke the 9 year old 400m freestyle record and Finlay Mathison had a stunning swim in the 12 year old boys 200m fly, breaking a record that had been very long standing.

Congratulations to everyone.​

On Saturday 28th June the club juniors travelled to Kingsbridge for an away team gala, our first team gala for a while.

We were competing against 4 other clubs, with age groups ranging from 8-14yrs. For some of our oldest and youngest swimmers this was their first-ever away gala! But confidence gained from all our regular swimming sessions mean't first-time nerves were well controlled, and we were extremely proud of everybody's performances and team spirit, with lots of support and cheering for each other. The team were a real credit to the club.
 
We saw some amazing relays and individual swims, especially Finn Mathison in 100m Fly gaining a PB and Niamh O'Connor in the 50m breaststroke. Special congratulations also go to Rosie Yardley, Liberty Moore and Jasper Moore for breaking 5 club records between them!

After much fun and strong swimming, we were rewarded with Exmouth coming 2nd over all.
 
Now it's onto Plymouth next weekend for the Summer Sizzler!

Rory lived up to the AP Race Plymouth Summer Open 2025 moto of being 'Better Than Yesterday' by achieving two personal bests (PBs) in his 200m Freestyle and 100m Backstroke races.  And this also earned him an age group gold and bronze medal respectively.

Ralf won golds in his age group, and achieved County qualifying times, in both the 800m and 1500m freestyle events at the Devon County Developments 2025, held at the Plymouth Life Centre over two weekends in June. It was the first time he had competed in the longer distance events, which makes the achievement even more impressive! And, he really enjoyed the experience!

Congratulations to our amazing swimmers on qualifying for regionals. We will all be cheering you on for April's championship.