Loading ...Originally written by DEAN MILLARD
PORTLAND Southern Bluefins swimming coach Vivienne Kennedy said she was fairly happy with the performance of her team at last weekend’s Victorian Country Long Course Swimming Championships.
Kennedy said the swimmers she had expected to do well at the championships had either met or exceeded her expectations, with a number of swimmers making finals.“We are all pretty happy with how we went,” Kennedy said.“The ones that I expected to perform performed very well, and the ones who were not so very well prepared found that out too.“It is a thing with junior sport, you get kids who are on the way out whose motivation is waning a little bit, so you get kids who would have possibly stopped swimming this season, but they keep going possibly because they have been pushed by parents or just for the fact that it was countries at home and probably didn’t put in the amount of work that they should have.“But they still had a good time and they still did okay, and we understood that was how it was going to be.“Then we had people who pulled one out of the box like young Brody Fishwick, who was a kid who has never been in a final before and he made four and had huge PBs in every swim.“He did very well.”She said some of the other standout performances of the team came from Ricarda McMillan, who won silver in the women’s 14 and 15 years 100 backstroke and also was a part of Portland’s bronze winning under-14 medley relay, while Shannon Malseed swam exceedingly well in her first country championships.“Ricarda’s silver was a very good achievement because this year she stepped up into the 14-15-year-old age group, so she still has another year in that age group to come.“Although she didn’t feature in the individual finals, Shannon Malseed swam very well also.“She swam some very good times, including a superb leg in an open freestyle relay, she swam a 1.08 in her leg of the relay after being thrown in to give someone else a break.“She was also not far off of making a backstroke final, so I think she has got a taste now and can’t wait for next year already.”Kennedy said the overall performance of the team’s under-14 women’s relay side, which consisted of McMillan, Malseed, Paige Olejniczak and Louise Bothe, was very impressive, not just to win bronze in the medley, but also to finish with a final in the freestyle relay, an event they were not expected to make the final in.Of the 46 clubs that entered, the star of the country championships was undoubtedly Traralgon swimmer Jeremy Saunders, who raced in no less than 13 individual events to easily win the individual aggregate points tally for the championships.“In many of the 13 and under boys events the podium was filled with three Traralgon boys, and it was Jeremy Saunders and a couple of others, so it was no surprise that he took out the major award for the most points accrued for the weekend” Kennedy said.In total Portland had 57 entries in individual events and was also represented by 10 relay teams, a fine effort for a squad of just 17 swimmers.
THE Victorian Country Long Course Swimming Championships made a big splash in Portland on the weekend, with 46 clubs and more than 2000 people attending the three-day event.Picture by EBONY GARNER 080127eg16
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