Middlesbrough's Tom Maine heads the qualifiers in three events, 15-16yrs 200m backstroke, 50m and 100m freestyle when the first half of the NE Counties long course age group championships are staged at Sheffield this weekend, writes ERIC WILKINSON.

Club mates Natasha Crawley, 13-14yrs 100m butterfly and 400m individual medley and Chris Surtees, 15-16yrs 200m butterfly and individual medley, are top seeds in two along with Danielle Berry (Newcastle), 11-12yrs 100m butterfly and freestyle.

Nicola Jackson (Derwentside) a member of Britain's World record breaking 4x200m freestyle team, was the fastest qualifier by over four seconds for the 15-16yrs 100m butterfly. Other top seeds include brother and sister David and Stephanie Proud (Chester-le-St) in the boys 13-16yrs 1500m freestyle and girls 11-12yrs 100m backstroke, Laura Whing (Gateshead), 11-12yrs 100m breaststroke, Tara Johnson (Newburn) 13-16yrs 800m freestyle and David Gibson (Sunderland) 15-16yrs 100m breaststroke.

Raventhorpe School, Darlington mixed medley and freestyle teams reached the finals at the Bazuka National Primary Schools relay team championships in Sheffield.

The freestyle quartet of Chloe Spalding, Scott Martin, Emily Jane Saxby and Matthew Lister finished fifth in the small schools final and with Adam Hillary replacing Chloe Spalding, they were eighth in the medley event.

Raventhorpe also had an exciting one points overall victory at the Darlington Large Junior Inter-Schools Gala scoring 66 points to Mowden's 65 with Abbey 58 taking third place. Raventhorpe were first in the boys events with Mowden second and Abbey third. Mowden won the girls trophy, the runners-up were Raventhorpe, Abbey and Whinfield tied for third place.

Heighington won the small schools girls and overall sections and were second in the boys events won by Hurworth House who were also second in the combined totals. The girls' runners-up were Polam Hall.