SOUTHEND Diving youngsters bagged three medals at the White Rose competition in Leeds.

Liam Ring and Sam Mansfield secured silver medals at the event, with Ewan Russell winning a bronze.

It was a good result for a large group of novice divers from the Garon Park programme.

Coaches Gareth Matthews and James Hadley were very pleased with the overall team performances and the three medals.

“The novice events are a good starting point for the programme’s new divers and provides them competition experience while they are learning new skills to enable them to compete more widely,” said Matthews.

“The Southend divers rose to the occasion with some excellent individual results and personal bests, as well as good debut performances from some of the younger divers.”

Day one started with the girls’ Group E eight to nine years with Amalee Wooton (18th) and Lilly Maggs (19th) making their debut at the youngest level.

Ethan King, Liam Ring, and Nathan Juniper competed in the boys’ 11-years group.

Liam qualified in the top six to go into the final and finish second to earn a silver and the first medal for the club.

This was followed by the girls’ group C events, with Alana Davies, Ceri Ewing, Evie Rasch, Jessica Scrace and Lexie Bushnell competing in the girls’ 12 yrs group C1. India Joseph Meddle and Megan Murphy competed in the girls’ 13 years group C2. All the girls dived well with minor errors keeping them from the finals.

Day two of events saw Amiee Slowley, Genevieve Booth and Peggy Jefferson compete in the girls’ group D1, before Lily Widdows and Ellie King dived in the girls’ D2 event which featured 37 competitors.

Colin Longhurst, Ewan Russell and Jossiah Maggs dived well in the boys’ 12 years group C1.

Ewan and Josiah made the final with Ewan winning a bronze and Josiah finishing fifth.

In the boys’ 13 years C2 event, Sam Mansfield and Indhi O’Hanlon both made the final, with Sam taking silver and Indhi finishing fifth.

Tayler Kallagher finished seventh in the girls’ 14/16 years group B event.