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From the 16th - 18th of July, swimmers headed to the SA Aquatic and Leisure Centre for three intense days of age group competition to determine South Australia’s age group and open Short Course Champions in the pool. During the summer season athletes will conduct the majority of their competition in a 50m (Long Course) swimming pool and then over winter the competition program focuses on events in a shorter distance pool set to 25m (Short Course). All of the team members had secured the qualification prerequisites through previous competition results. Spirits soared as personal best times in a number of events were improved and individuals finished ranked amongst the most competitive swimmers in their respective age groups. With events being resulted based upon performances in heat swims, there was additional pressure to produce a perfect performance. In the week leading up to the Championships a number of swimmers took up chance to train with the squad at Immanuel College where previous club coach Carolyn Veldhuyzen is currently based.
From her 8 events swum, Jade Calverley proved she is one of South Australia’s best multiclass athletes, being award gold in all but one of her events. Jade recently attended a gathering of athletes who have been placed on the ‘Long List’ of athletes who are being considered for possible selection into the 2016 Rio Paralympic Team and proudly wore her International Paralympic attire to the competition. Managing an injury to her wrist, Jade was unable to post her most competitive times, but still swam with purpose and passion. Through her performances at earlier competitions Jade has achieved the qualification standards necessary to contest the Australian Short Course Championships in November in both breastroke and freestyle and has her sights firmly set on this competition. Joel Edmonds gave the team a real boost with his outstanding performance in the 11 and under 100m freestyle event, which saw him up on the medal podium having recorded the third fastest time in South Australia for his age group. His time of 1.10.01 was a massive thirteen second improvement and with further race experience and refinement of his starts, turns and finishes Joel will certainly be one to watch in this event. Joel didn’t stop at this first event. narrowly missing medals in the 100m butterfly (1.25.38) to finish 5th, 50m freestyle (32.08) to finish 4th and 200m freestyle (2.44.15) to finish 9th. Max Rogaliski competed in the same age group as his teammate Joel and was focussed on building on his previous experience at State Championship level from January. Max was thrilled to post personal best times in each of his four races and recorded his most competitive times in breastroke. Building on his trade mark super quick reaction time off the starting blocks, Max placed 6th in both the 11 and under 50m breastroke (44.04) and 100m breastroke (1.37.89). His 50m freestyle time has now dropped to 35.31 seconds which improved his previous best by a clear second. His final race of the meet was his 50m backstroke which again saw him wipe 2 seconds from his personal best to finish in 42.67 seconds.
Competing at her first State Championships, Kylie Hurrell contained her nerves and swum two excellent breastroke events. She was able to hold her stroke well for the duration of both races and finished strongly on each occasion. Her 50m time was bettered by .58 of a second to record a 48.61 and with further development of her starts and turns Kylie will be poised for a very exciting SA Country Championships in January. Two swimmers represented West Coast in the 12 year old girls’ age group. Dana Hurrell is incredible to watch in her events and actively supports her team mates with plenty of positive encouragement. Through her dedication to training and willingness to incorporate coaching feedback, she made some amazing improvements at this event and finished top ten for her age group in both the 50m and 100m breastroke events. Her 50m time was recorded as a 40.34 whilst she wiped three seconds off her 100m time to record a 1.30.27. Dana’s fitness showed throughout the 200m breastroke where she successfully swam a huge 15 seconds faster than she did in January in the same event. Her time was clocked at 3.14.06. Also competing as a 12 year old, Jamie Ford was able to execute her most successful meet to date walking away with personal best times in all 6 events swum. Her first event of the meet was the 200m butterfly and Jamie finished 5 seconds better than she had previously swum in 3.03.21. Next on the program was the 100m backstroke and she finished in 8th position in 1.18.31 followed by the 100m butterfly in which she literally flew to finish 4 seconds quicker (1.20.26). Jamie loves a 50m sprint event and in the 50m Backstroke she finished 7th in an awesome time of 35.83. In the 50m freestyle she well and truly blitzed her heat on her start to finish in 31.83 seconds (11th) and in her pet event the 50m butterfly she recorded her first sub 34 second swim (33.84 seconds) to record her most competitive placing in 6th. Christopher Bawden had set himself a busy schedule with 7 events over the three days of competition. Competing as a 14 year old at this meet certainly saw the competition standard heat up. Chris was able to record personal best swims in the 200 metre breastroke where he swam a 2.49.52 to finish in 7th position. He also lowered his 100m breastroke time to 1.18.44 to place 8th and narrowly missed the hat trick of personal bests in the 50m event by .1 of a second, recording a result of 36.71 seconds. Chris also swam the 400m freestyle (5.05.31) and with a little more race experience will quickly drop this event to under the 5 minute mark. His 100m freestyle also has plenty of potential to work down around the minute mark with some careful attention to maintaining consistent low 16 second splits over 25 metres and working hard to hold an efficient streamline after each turn. Chris’s time of 1.05.11 shows he is holding is fitness well over winter and will reap the benefits of regular attendance at training as we come into the summer season. He swam a very quick 50m freestyle race of 28.54 seconds which was a nice .3 second personal best and finished the meet with a 50m butterfly, reaching the end of the pool in a 31.30 which was again quicker than he has ever managed the race previously. Jamie Ford (12 years) 50m Butterfly - 33.84 The coaching team at West Coast Swimming Club would like to congratulate all of those swimmers attending the championships. Age group swimming can certainly be a challenging environment for swimmers, as the category they are placed in is determined by the age the swimmer is on the first day of the swimming meet. For some swimmers this means swimming with competitors that can be up to 11 months older than they are and can result in a false perception of how competitive they are as compared to swimmers of a similar physical developmental phase in their adolescence. The club places the emphasis on swimmers striving to record personal best times and instead benchmarking their performance against the Junior Excellence and Youth Performance Squad age group criteria.
The club is also extremely proud to announce that they have been listed as a finalist in the community sport category in this year’s Brand SA Regional Awards. The competitive swimming year commences on the 1st of October and the club is always keen to receive enquiries from interested able bodied or swimmers with a disability who are interested in learning more about how they can take advantage of being involved in the sport. More information is available via www.westcoastswimmingclub.com
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AUTHORSonia Ford is our publicity officer and would love to hear of noteworthy news items from our swimming community! |
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