SWIMMING: Beetley Girl, Marcella Aris 15, who swims for St Felix School in Suffolk, took part in the Regional Youth Championships at the UEA SportsPark, Norwich.

She is just back from an intensive week-long training camp in Cyprus with England talent and was raring to go in her first, fully fit, gala of the year.

Having qualified for a number of events, Marcella faced a busy weekend of heats and finals.

On Saturday she competed in the 100m butterfly, 200m backstroke, 200m freestyle, 400m individual medley and 4x100m relay events. She won the 200m freestyle in a personal best time of 2:06.03 and 400m IM, getting silver in the 200m backstroke and in the relay event with her team qualifying for the Youth National Championships.

Sunday brought another mixed bag of events including 100m backstroke, 800m freestyle, 400m freestyle, 4x200m relay and 100m freestyle.

Marcella won the 800m and 400m with flying colours. She mustered all her energy for the final session late on Sunday afternoon, helping her team to another relay silver, and a youth national qualifying performance in the 4x200m.

All that was left was the 100m freestyle final. Marcella fought bravely to try and make a clean sweep of the freestyle gold medals, hitting the 50m in first place. On the return she fought tooth and nail to maintain her lead but was just out-touched on the wall by sprint specialist Shauna Lee from Hatfield.

Marcella was happy overall with her performance, bringing home four golds and four silvers. Work now starts preparing for the Youth National Championships in August.

Marcella thanked the Norfolk Sports and Cultural Foundation for her funding support this year.