The British and English Summer Swimming Championships were held at Ponds Forge, Sheffield over two recent weekends.

The report and photos from the opening round appeared in last week’s Isle of Man Examiner.

Week two saw coach Silla Parnell arrive in Sheffield as coach Lee Holland departed for Trinidad and Tobago for the Commonwealth Youth Games.

With Parnell was swimmer and national championship debutante, 14-year-old Lauren Dennett.

She has burst onto the Manx swimming scene in the past 18 months with a set of results that have opened eyes at a number of levels, winning medals at regional and county level.

But the English championships was her biggest test to date and where she competed at the 400m and 1,500m freestyle distances, the latter being the longest pool event.

Dennett made her international debut at the Guernsey Island Games and really burst onto the scene in the two events there, pushing her way through the rankings when she dropped a full minute off her 1,500m lifetime best to finish sixth in the women’s event at Guernsey as the youngest swimmer in the pool.

The English championships was an excellent experience to learn how the processes run at the highest domestic level, but the young talent was not phased in the slightest by the occasion, a new-found confidence seemingly grown out of results in Guernsey.

Dennett went into the event ranked outside of the top 10, but this is rarely a reliable factor for the youngster as her progression curve is so steep at present that her coaches never know what time to predict - and she did not disappoint.

She swam a near-perfect race plan as worked and rehearsed with Parnell and her time was a huge 24-second lifetime best, then came the wait for the rest of the seeded heats and the ‘faster’ qualifiers in her age group to come.

The faster seeded girls came but one by one fell short of Dennett’s mark and, after another hour of waiting, it became clear that nobody was able to match her effort and Lauren was crowned 14-years English national champion, a feat the Isle of Man has not seen since Charlotte Atkinson 14 years prior.

The following day, Dennett also went on to contest the 400m freestyle where she made a huge drop of 12 seconds to qualify fifth fastest for the final, then dropping a further five seconds in the final of the event to finish fourth, a fantastic first showing at this level.

National coach Lee Holland commented: ‘The 1,500 event is one normally assigned at this level to swimmers from clubs who focus primarily on distance swimming.

‘So for Lauren to come through the ranks of a club that makes the most noise on a national level in the 50m and 100m sprint events to this has taken a lot of input from coach Parnell as well as Lauren’s incredible work ethic to get to this point.

‘It’s an exciting time for us all after an incredible summer in Guernsey and a really exciting time for us all going into next season.

‘The value that is added by our sponsors Utmost Wealth International as well as the hard work that gets put in by all of my coaching team is unbelievable and we have no plans on slowing down in producing these thoroughbred athletes doing such big things at this level.’