IRVINE swimmer Adam Currie helped the North Ayrshire team to punch above their weight qualifying for multiple finals at the West District Junior Age Group Championships in Glasgow.

“He was my swimmer of the meet,” said head coach, Jess Wilkie, "for executing a lot of the skills we’ve been practising in training such as under waters and breathing.

“It was good to see him doing it under pressure. Even when he knew he was tired he still managed to do it to the best of his ability and that was picked up by a lot of the other coaches who were there at the weekend.

The 12-year-old made the final of the 100m backstroke on Saturday, beating his entry time in the heat, and going faster again, finishing just outside the medals with fourth place in the 200m fly.

“We tried to give the swimmers constructive feedback based on what they thought about their races and how they felt during their swims - identifying the aspects they thought they’d done well or not - and trying to get them to come up with solutions and how to fix it.

“It’s about facilitating their thought processes, rather than just giving them all the information, and getting them thinking a little bit more," the coach added.

It was Adam’s 400m individual medley which caught the eye of junior coach Alan Dickson, who added: “It was really good performance, the race plan was to keep the fly nice and skilful. Adam’s got a few stroke traits when he gets tired and we spoke about that before the race, but he kept it all in check. I was really pleased that he ended up with a 10 second Personal Best.

He put in more impressive performances on the Sunday, lowering his times to make the finals of the 100m breaststroke and 200m Individual Medley and beating his entry marks in the 200m backstroke and 200m free.

“Although it’s still early in the season there was some hard racing and it was good to see many of the kids getting into finals and even winning medals," Alan said.

He added: "I was delighted with how many of those finalists managed to improve their times again which is down to the process: making sure they’re in the frame of mind to swim a final, that they swim down after finishing their heat and warm up again before the race.

“It was really pleasing to see all the girls in the 800m free getting PBs, especially Eilidh Moore, who I coach,” commented Alan. “I’ve been working towards this distance at JAGS with them and they way they paced their races couldn’t have gone any better. Eilidh and I discussed how she could maintain the integrity of her fly stroke ahead of her 400m IM and she did that really well, too.

“She needed a bit more attack in the back and the breast, but she still managed to PB the race. Eilidh swam well all weekend with a lovely PB in the 100m Free which was really pleasing to show there’s a bit of speed there as well as the ability to pace an 800m.”

Kilwinning’s Cameron McDonald was five seconds under his 200m breaststroke mark and took three seconds off his 100m time.

The focus of the training in the next few weeks will be on preparing the swimmers to peak for the pre-Christmas meet at Warrender, in Glenrothes. Then in the early weeks of 2019 they’ll be heading back to Tollcross for the West District Long Course Championships