The 2024 South West Summer Regionals concluded on the early May Bank Holiday Monday after 3 weekends of challenging competition for AST Burnham’s entrants, all of whom delivered some outstanding swimming during the championships. It had something of an end of an era feel to it with this being Head Coach Sara Flinton’s last meet coaching with the Academy Swim Team. She signed off at the last weekend working with some of the older swimmers that she has trained and supported over the last several years as together they have...

The Academy Swim Team is sad to announce the resignation of Head Coach Sara Flinton. The Academy Swim Team Burnham on Sea has been extremely lucky to have had Sara working with the Swim Team for the past 8 years. She has devoted many hours inside and outside of training to support the club but has now decided that the time is right for her to step down and move away from swimming. Sara initially gave her notice hoping to see out the season until July but due to personal...

The Academy Swim Team are delighted to announce that as of 1st May 2024 Lewis Plume and Chris Wood will be joining our Coaching team. Lewis will be taking charge of the new Junior Squad which will be an entry point for new swimmers into the Club. This new 2 hours per week squad will have an entry criteria of a swimmer being able to swim between 2 to 4 lengths of the pool and have an understanding of all 4 strokes. Chris will be supporting Lewis in this role...

With a lot of the Academy Swim Team Squad taking a rest after a busy period of competing ahead of the South West Regional Championships, a mostly young squad with a few of the more senior swimmers travelled to a quieter than usual Millfield Pool for the Taunton Deane, Street & Millfield Spring Splash. The pool was about half full with most teams attending without their Regional qualified swimmers. This gave the meet a very relaxed atmosphere and with less swimmers attending than usual the sessions went by quickly with...

Following on from busy March a small squad of swimmers from the Academy Swim Team travelled to Hengrove in Bristol to compete at the Level 1 City of Bristol International Open meet. For the older swimmers this was an opportunity to post times in the national qualification window, whilst for most of the younger swimmers taking part it was a great chance to experience the next level of competition and swim in a long course meet. On Friday evening 5 swimmers took on the Long Distance events, starting with Harry...

For the second time in March the Academy Swim Team made the short trip to Hutton Moor in Weston, this time to compete at the Soundwell Swimming Club Regional Qualifier. There were swimmers from 14 teams taking part in the meet from across the South West, including teams from Gloucester down to Dawlish, making it a packed and highly competitive meet. For AST Burnham there was a mixture of swimmers chasing regional times and young swimmers continuing to show great progress with some outstanding swimming across the age groups from...

Following straight on from a successful Somerset County Championships there was no let up for Academy Burnham Swimmer Leo Woodrow (12) who headed to Swansea for 4 days to compete at his first Wales National Championships from the 22nd to the 25th of March. This was 12 months in the making for Leo as he also qualified for the Welsh Nationals in 2023 before mechanical failures at the national pool in Swansea prevented last year’s edition from going ahead. Starting on Friday with back to back events Leo made the...

The second and final weekend of the 2024 County Championships took place at a slightly less raucous than usual Millfield School Pool due to a few clashes with national qualifying meets over the same weekend. There was still a high standard of competitive swimming on show though with AST Burnham’s swimmers putting in a lot of great performances over the weekend. The Boys 100M Back kicked things off where Killian Faubel (11) set a new best time with a 7th place finish. A very high standard was on show in...

Report by Steph Powell What a weekend! 8 swimmers from AST Burnham took on the challenging Level 1 Long Course meet being held at Millfield School. Sessions were broken into Senior and Junior sessions with a 3rd session each day for finals made up from the fastest junior and senior qualifiers. Racing started on Friday night with Emily Knight (16) and Zach Powell (15) competing in the 400M Medley. On Saturday morning it was the Senior session racing first where Jay Duggan (14) took on the 50M Breaststroke, followed by...

With the Academy Swim Team competing at two different meets over the weekend, a mostly young squad, along with a few of the more senior swimmers, took on the Keynsham and Bristol Penguin Spring Open Meet at nearby Hutton Moor in Weston. It was a packed meet schedule with a lot of 9 to 11 year olds competing and it was great to see a lot of young swimmers, including those from AST Burnham, beginning to make their way in competitive swimming. All events were mixed with medals awarded to...