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DELIGHT: Ferndown's Lydia McManus is the new South West senior and junior champion in the 50m butterfly

LYDIA McManus and Dominic Macdonald extended Ferndown Otters' title-winning streak with gold medal swims in the Western Counties championships at Weston- super- Mare.

McManus, 15, returned from the Somerset resort with three gold medals and one bronze while Macdonald became a regional junior champion.

McManus's medals included the junior and senior golds for the 50m butterfly in which she led home an Otters one-two in 29.02sec.

Nicole Scott, 15, one of Ferndown's winners in both the national inter-county and the England schools championships during the two previous weekends, took the senior and junior silver medals in 29.8.

McManus confirmed her form in the 100m freestyle, dipping under the minute mark for the first time to take the junior gold and the senior bronze medal in 59.7.

Team-mate Emily Freeman, 16, was not far behind in 1:00.02.

Dominic Macdonald, 15, was also in top form, setting a personal best time of 1min 57sec to take the junior gold in the 200m freestyle.

He also sliced two seconds off his PB in the 200m backstroke (2:13.4).

Fran Hughes, 13, picked up a junior bronze in the 100m breaststroke in 1min 14sec with 12-year-old national age group champion Naomi Vides recording 1:17 against older girls in the penultimate heat.

Craig Freeman, 13, was another in top form - he recorded a PB of 2:02 in the 200m freestyle.

Cat Close lowered her best time in the 100m backstroke to 1:08.6.

Otters were expecting more awards in Sunday's final session only for it to be cancelled due to poor water quality in the pool.

Coach Tony Watson said: "This was a young group of swimmers and we are very pleased with what the guys achieved. We were looking forward to another good afternoon after on Sunday."

Bournemouth Dolphins' Chris Campbell, 15, won three bronze medals, including both the senior and junior bronze in the 50m breaststroke in which he clocked 31.7sec.

He was also third junior in the 50m freestyle (25.77) and recorded short-course national qualifying times (NQTs) in the 200m and 400m individual medley (2:15.10 and 4:44.72).

Twelve-year-old Natalie Moore recorded NQTs in the 400m freestyle (4:37.25) and 200m backstroke (2:31.88) and slashed 31 seconds off her 800m time to stop the clock at 9:27.15.

"I checked on the rankings and her 400m and 800m times move her to second in the country in her age group," said coach Graham Bassi.

He added: "We took a small, select group to Weston and made fantastic progress."

10:45am Thursday 9th November 2006

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