Plymouth secure first gold and Southend duo shine on debut

Reigning top club, Plymouth, secured their first gold of this year’s GoCardless Swim England Diving National Age Group Championships in the final session of day one.

At the 2023 championships, Plymouth Diving Club were awarded the Dawdon Shield Trophy for top club after collecting a total of 17 medals across the four days.

In the third and final session of the opening day in 2024, the club claimed their first gold medal and third medal overall of the competition.

Rose McCabe and Lexi Davies teamed up to top the table in the Female Group A/B 3m Synchro event – following on from the bronze medals collected by Maddie Elliott and Seth Greentree in their respective events earlier in the day.

The Plymouth pairing scored 188.04 points which saw them improve on the club’s 2023 total and saw Davies upgrade last year’s bronze to a gold medal.

Plymouth Diving coach, Fito Gutierrez, gave his reaction after the competition and said: “We’re really happy, it’s been a really difficult year for us back in Plymouth, but we’ve been working really hard with the kids and getting them in a good mindset.

“You get results when they are more relaxed so I’m really happy and pleased for the girls that they did really, really well.”

Gutierrez is looking forward to the rest of this weekend’s events after his club’s success on day one, as he said: “This is day one so it’s a good parameter for what is to come in the next few days.”

Previous winners of this event, Southend’s Sadie Stratford and Rain Downer, went close to retaining their title but were narrowly outscored. But it was still back-to-back medals for the duo as they took home silver.

The third placed finish was highly contested for, but it was Dive London’s Myia Richards and Ruby Taylor-Ross who won the bronze medal.

Just 1.2 points separated them and the fourth placed Chloe Strutt and Dimarni Washington-Scott of City of Sheffield Diving Club.

Debut delight for Southend synchro pairing

The final event of day one was the Open Group C/D 1m Synchro which saw the youngest pair of the synchro teams, Blake Scroxton and Beau Barry, take home the gold medal after scoring an excellent 149.61 across four dives.

Both divers were making their National Age Group Championships debuts and their coaches, James Hadley and Sasha Brook, were delighted with their performance.

Hadley said: “We’re incredibly proud of that performance. For both of them it’s their first time at national age groups and their first time competing at this level.

“They’re D1 and that category can go all the way up to C2 so there could’ve been boys in there that were three or four years older than them – so we’re very, very proud.”

Brook added further praise, saying: “They’ve both worked incredibly hard coming into this competition.

“When they first started synchro there wasn’t the best timing – but they’ve worked so hard and their performance today was really good.”

Plymouth Diving’s Harry Westbury and Seth Greentree were awarded silver after their synchro display, in which they scored an overall 138.00.

After winning gold in his individual event in the Open Group D 3m, Alex Chrisitian returned to the board to compete with his synchro partner Isaac Beck.

The City of Sheffield divers finished on a total of 102.75 points and took home the bronze medal.

Story written by Gabby Laurent

Pictures: Will Johnston Photography