Golden treble

IN THE MEDALS: Gisborne swimmer Jack Keepa won four gold medals and set a Hawke’s Bay Poverty Bay age group record at the New Zealand Short Course Championships this month. Picture by Paul Rickard

Swimmers from Gisborne were among the medals at the New Zealand Short Course Championships in Auckland.

Enterprise Cars Swim Team’s Jack Keepa set a Hawke’s Bay-Poverty Bay age group record and won a gold medal in the 15 years boys 100 metres breaststroke.

He also won the 50m and 200m breaststroke finals and the 100m individual medley.

He picked up silver medals in the 200m and 400m individual medley races, and bronze in the 100m butterfly.

Jodiesha Kirkpatrick, from the Comet club, also won medals of all colours in the breaststroke — gold in the 13yrs girls 50m, silver in the 100m and bronze in the 200m.

Her 50m and 100m swims were HBPB age group records.

She also got a bronze in the 200m butterfly.

Ava Smith, from Enterprise, set a HBPB age group record on her way to silver in the 16yrs girls’ 100m breaststroke. She also picked up bronze in the 50m breaststroke.

Jamie Joblin, from Comet, grabbed a silver in the 15yrs boys’ 50m breaststroke.

Imogen Amor-Bendall, also of Comet, collected silver in the 14yrs girls’ 200m butterfly and bronze in the 100 fly.

On the final day of competition, Comet had three swimmers involved in the women’s 200m fly at open level.

Amor-Bendall placed 15th, Holly Fisher 18th and Kirkpatrick 25th.

Kirkpatrick was 26th in the women’s 100m breaststroke open.

“Despite the small team, we made a large impact and came away with seven age-group medals and two Hawke’s Bay-Poverty Bay records (to Jodiesha),” said Comet coach Jamie Isemonger.

The club wanted to continue the momentum in the lead-up to the HBPB summer champs at the Olympic Pool in December.

Enterprise had several other swimmers at the short-course champs.

Jaimee Fisher’s best placing was fourth in the 19-and-over women’s 400m freestyle while Emily Horne was seventh in the 15yrs girls’ 50m butterfly.

Cody Anderson’s best was sixth in the 14yrs boys’ 1500m freestyle and Nathan Proctor’s best was seventh in the 16yrs boys’ 200m butterfly.

Top young Enterprise swimmer Tyler Finau competed in the Australian state teams champs earlier this month. She set a HBPB 15yrs girls’ short-course record in the 200m backstroke in which she placed fifth.