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TFIS - Dalgety Bay swimmer sharpens act for European Championships
In the recent Slovenian International Open Swimming Championships, Kranji, the Carnegie Swimming Club 15 year old won the silver medal in the 200metres Individual Medley (IM) and just missed out on a medal in the 400metres Individual Medley final.
"I was hoping to get to a few finals but certainly not expecting a medal so I was quite pleased," said Eloise, a Tayside & Fife Institute of Sport (TFIS) supported athlete.
At the same event fellow TFIS supported athlete, Dundee's Ross Clark, won the silver medal in the 200 metres breaststroke. Former TFIS athlete, Glenrothes' Daniel Scott, won the gold medal in the 100 metres butterfly, silver medals in the 50 metres freestyle, backstroke and butterfly along with a bronze medal in the 100m backstroke.
That event was against the best in Slovenia. At the end of this month Eloise, Daniel and Dalgety Bay's Lucy Ellis will make up the entire Scottish contingent in the British team competing in Belgrade when Serbia hosts the European Junior Championships.
"This is my first GB selection and it will certainly help my confidence that I won the silver medal in Slovenia," said Eloise, who qualified for the team at the British & Olympic trials in Sheffield this March.
"In the 200 metres Individual Medley I swam 2:20:89 (more than seven seconds faster than her time a year ago), which was inside the time and I came fourth in the race. I'm going as a reserve for the 4x100 freestyle relay aswell."
Eloise's next few weeks consists of "training and more training, with some eating and sleeping" thrown in before she tapers down for the Europeans. Like the coaches of the other two swimmers, Carnegie coach Gilbert Kirkwoodhas helped develop Eloise in conjunction with the TFIS.
"She's good on all strokes now and her individual strokes are excellent," he said. "We are concentrating on the 200 IM but the aim as she gets older is to look at 400 IM as well.
"She is starting a Strength & Conditioning programme now with the TFIS which will make her stronger. It's been a real team effort with everybody specialising in their own area and pull together as a team."
The Europeans is one of Eloise's two major goals for the season and if she swims a fast time then she has a chance of qualifying for her second majoraim, the Commonwealth Youth Games, held in Pune, India, this October.
"My biggest goal was to get to the European juniors, my second is to get to Pune," she said. "I was going for a qualification time for Pune last weekend in the Scottish Championships but I missed it by half a second. The Europeans will be my last chance to get a time and hopefully I'll get it there.