Greerton Swim Club had a stunning result on the first night of finals at the NZ Short Course Swimming Champs.
The Girls 13-15-year-old relay team won the 200m freestyle relay in a Bay of Plenty age group and BOP open record of 1:47.88. The team qualified second fastest through theheats but improved another 2 seconds to take the win in the final.
This is a fantastic result considering the competition from the big city clubs such as United from Auckland and Capital from Wellington.
The team finished 5th in the 2012 final, so have been building nicely over the last year.
To make it even more interesting, their bearded and ponytailed coach Tai Daniela promised to get his head and/or beard shaved if they won gold.
The actual race plan was based around using the quickest swimmers through legs 1-3, building a lead and leaving the fourth ranked swimmer to hold on. It worked a treat with Claudia Capp (leg 1), Danielle Waiari (2) and Libby Bradley (3) handing over a one body length lead to Stacey Muir who swam beautifully against the rest to touch with about 30 centimetres to spare.
In other day one news Claudia Capp won silver in the girls 15 200m butterfly, also in a BOP age group record (2:22.50) and breaking her personal best by around seven seconds.
