The curtain came down on the Plymouth Diving competition season in Southend at the weekend with The National Skills Final.
17 Plymouth divers made the long journey east towards Southend on Sea for the culmination of this season’s hard work to dive against the best in the country. It was the usual early alarm call for some of the Plymouth divers in session one of the weekend event.
D1 Girls kicked off the event in front of a large crowd with three Plymouth Divers taking centre stage amongst their adversaries, as the action got underway the crowd became more vocal with every dive. The crowd were either checking live scores on their phones, watching the next diver or looking up at the big score board as judges scores came in. As it goes it wouldn’t be too long until Plymouth got themselves on the medal board with brilliant bronze medal for Lacey-May Hocking scoring 274.50 from her 12 dives and sensational silver being awarded to Millie Mclearn-Smith with 278.00 narrowly missing gold by 2 points. Bethany Hockaday once again ended another consistent season just missing out on a top 10 place in 12th place on a fine score of 254.55.
Plymouths youngest female’s divers were next to display their abilities in their final in E girls. The three girls representing Plymouth have all had incredible season with Aria Cole finding herself on top of the podium more times than not with her rapidly improving cousin Eva Colman and the equally as impressive Nancy Moore in the mix throughout the event. Another gold was shortly going to be presented to Plymouths Aria as she added the National Title to her growing medal collection with a score of 292.45. Plymouths two other divers both found themselves in the top 10 in this event with Nancy Moore in 10th Place scoring 245.80, an outstanding achievement considering 45 minutes before the competition she hadn’t even seen the pool and Eva Colman who had the biggest brightest smile as she came in 6th place to round off the excellent debut season for her with a final score of 264.45.
The final event of a terrific first session was D2 girls with two Plymouth divers in the field. Both Plymouth girls had begun brightly in their 12-dive circuit. The lead changed hands many times with many girls in the field being in podium contention. When the dives were completed, Plymouth were celebrating another gold medal this time with Stephanie Clarke taking her place on the top of the podium with an impressive score of 283.95. Another top 10 finish for Honor-Grace Kelly in 7th place ended her consistent season which yielded her first her first gold medal earlier in the season.
The afternoon session was an all-boy event, and it started with E boys being first to get the session underway. The two representatives for Plymouth came in the form of Parker Harrison and Leo Ozkan. Both the boys looked imperious on 3m board especially generating big scores from their dives on that specific board. The Plymouth divers both found themselves in the top 10 with Parker Harrison finishing in 8th position with a score of261.75 and Leo Ozkan in 5th Place with 274.70. It was a fine performance from both boys, and they will be looking to kick on to next season.
There was one sole Plymouth Diver in the next two events with Elliot McCamphill-Rose competing in D2 boys and Dixon Houghton in B Boys. Elliot produced very consistent display for his 12 dives, in what proved a highly competitive field to get himself into the top 10 in 7th Place with a score of 249.60.
Dixon ended the first day of diving in the B Boys competition. The scoring was high with many of the divers in the field going over the 300-point barrier and Dixon was in strong company. Dixon had a very impressive 3m display to get himself into an 8th Place finish and will count himself unlucky not have finished higher such was the calibre of scoring int he event.
The second day of the event was a quieter day in the pool for Plymouth with just four girls from Plymouth. C1 category was first to go featuring Imogen-Rose Hocking and Aneya Burton. After impressive seasons for each, confidence was high for strong finish for both girls. The Plymouth girls looked in peak form, even with Aneya suffering from an extremely low score on one dive this didn’t deter her and finished off very strongly, Immi once again personified consistence looking incredible strong on the 3m springboard. Imogen-Rose finished in 5th place an incredible achievement on a final score of 282.15 and Aneya Burton ended up just outside the top 10 in 11th finishing with a score of 268.25 which wasn’t a true reflection of her dives.
Finally, the last two Plymouth representatives got to take to the diving boards with Rae Mossford and Grace Norsworthy in the C2 Girl category. Rae making her 3rd apparencies at National Finals and Grace making her debut didn’t take them long to settle into the final’s atmosphere. Grace dived well to finish in the top 20 and will take great confidence from this season results into next season, but Rae Mossford went one better than last year’s bronze medal with an upgrade to silver medal with a score of 305.05. Rae’s 3m springboard dives the highlight of her dives .
A massive thanks goes to coaches Jaime Conn and Claire Burton who came out of coaching retirement to help the divers in the Finals this year. Plymouth would like to extend their thanks and gratitude to sponsors Pilkington Estates, Wollens Solicitors and Plymouth Active Leisure with the club looking forward to more success next season.
