On the weekend of 2-3 July a team of 13 Albatross divers travelled to compete at The National Skills Level 2 Finals in Southend on Sea. The event had attracted a record number of entries with over 250 divers competing. The team consisted of William Frewin, Freya Nellis, Alice France, Milly Orgill, Tilly Waight, Zac Cooper, James Ridley, Natalia Ivanov, Molly Lefever, Aiden Jones, Hernan Mosquedo-Jolly, Austin Bradbury and Lauren Saunders for many this was their first National event.

National Skills 2016

On day one of the event the first diver to compete for Albatross was Lauren Saunders in Girls Group E, she gave a good performance scoring well on her line ups from the 3m board, finishing in 9th place.

In the Boys Group D1 Austin Bradbury had a good event scoring well on his poolside dives to take 12th place. Our next competitors in Boys Group D2 was Aiden Jones and Hernan Mosqueda-Jolly, both boys had a steady event scoring securely on each dive to finish in 7th place and 10th place respectively.

The penultimate event on the first day was Girls Group C2 Tilly Waight and Milly Orgill competed. Tilly scored well on all her dives to finish in 13th place. Milly had an excellent competition scoring high marks on all her dives especially from the 3m and 1m boards to take the Silver medal just missing out on a Gold medal by point one of a mark.

Girls Group B+ saw the biggest competition of the weekend with 37 competitors; Freya Nellis and Alice France were in this group. Alice had a good competition scoring well off her inward tuck somersault dive from the 1m board finishing in 20th place. Freya dived well scoring highly on her inward one and half somersaults from 1m and 3m boards to end the competition in 16th place.

On Day 2 Molly Lefever and Natalia Ivanov competed in the Girls Group D2. Molly dived consistently throughout the competition doing well with her pool side dives eventually finishing in 13th place. Natalia had a steady competition to finish in 21st place.

In Boys Group C1, Zac Cooper, and James Ridley competed. Zac scored well on his back tuck line up from 3m and finished the contest in 11th place with James close behind in 13th place. The final event of the weekend was the Boys Group B+ with William diving; he had a good eMilly Orgill National Skills Finals, Southend 2016vent scoring well on his back tuck dive off the 1m board to take 9th place.

Congratulations to all the divers, for many this was their first taste of a National Event.