Swimming: Greerton swimmers impress at Taupo meet

Ella Browne powered her way to victory in the 400IM medley at the 2014 Taupo Xcelerate Meet. Photo/Supplied

The winter short course (25m pool) swimming season started with a bang over the weekend with two days of competition at the 2014 Taupo Xcelerate Meet.

With 24 swimmers competing, the Greerton Swim Club fielded a range of age groups from 8 years to 17.

Particularly impressive for the Greerton team were two swimmers who are beginning to show the benefits of their slowly increasing training workloads.

Ella Browne, 14, newly promoted to the top training squad, won the 800m freestyle gold in a personal best 10:27.21 along with the 400m IM in a 5:51.94 best time.

She also won bronze in the 200m breaststroke and 100m butterfly and silver in the 100m IM.

Fellow 14-year-old Ella Moor displayed some fine freestyle and backstroke technique, winning the 200m freestyle and taking three silvers and a bronze over the remaining events after setting a meet record in the 100m freestyle preliminaries with a time of 1:02.92.

Jasmine Baggaley, 13, took out the breaststroke sprint double winning the 50m and 100m and backed up with some big personal best times.

Another 13-year-old to score multiple gold medals was Marijke Hattingh, who won quadruple gold in the 50m, 100m and 200m backstroke and the 100m IM along with silver in the 50m freestyle.

The 16 and over age group was dominated by Greerton swimmers. Claudia Capp, Lucy Happe, Stacey Muir, Emma Harding and Libby O'Toole consistently populated the result-sheets with the 400m IM final finishing in exactly that order, Claudia's gold won in a swift 5:24.17. The 400m and 800m freestyle results were similar.

Of the male contingent, most impressive was the silver squad duo of Connor Farrell and Lochlainn O'Connor. Connor, 11, was the club's most decorated swimmer of the weekend, breaking meet records in four events and claiming gold in the 200 IM in 2:48.36 (meet record), 100 free in 1:06.81 (meet record) as well as the 50m, 100m, 200m breaststroke, and the 50m butterfly (meet record).

Lochlainn, 13, won the 50m butterfly fly, 200m backstroke and the 50m freestyle along with silver medals in the 200m IM and 800m freestyle.

Backing up the older boys was Ian Pugh, 9, who came first in the 50m backstroke, 50m freestyle and 100m freestyle.