HALTON ace Katie Holmes showed outstanding determination at the four-day Irish National Short Course Champion-ships and European trials to reach three individual finals and two relay finals.

The 15-year-old breast-stroke specialist pushed Irish star Susannah Murphy all the way in the 200m to take the silver medal after a superbly-paced race at Lis-burn.

She then forced the pace all the way from the gun in the 50m event and was unlucky to be touched out into finishing third.

Two days later, Katie finished fourth over 100m with Susannah Murphy again taking first place - only four tenths of a second separating the top four places.

Will Warburton also battled hard to reach four finals in this tough competition, his best effort coming in a particularly competitive 400m medley event with a very creditable seventh.

Lucy Myler fought her way into two finals and seventh places for 50m back-stroke and 100m freestyle, the latter in a fine time of 1:00.2.

Katie Scutt, 13, also performed with great credit to finish 13th in the 200m event.

Halton's junior ladies (under 16s) medley relay team of Louise Wallbank, Katie Scutt, Lucy Myler and Katie Holmes were desperately unlucky to miss a medal - losing out to local team Lisburn, in third, by just eight tenths of a second.

Andrew Matthews had a great trip to the Emerald Isle, setting a club-record time for 400m freestyle and a personal best at 100m freestyle - 56.9 seconds in the relay.

Louise Wallbank. Sarah-Louise Banner and Lindsay Jude all reached semi-finals in individual events.

In a special invitation event at these championships, Halton's masters swim-mer and coach Sarah Gleave added to the club's successes. She stormed to victory in a freestyle event against the best of Ireland's coaches.

Katie Holmes, William Warburton, Lucy Myler and Sarah-Louise Banner move onto the GB Youth Championships at Sheffield this week.