Swimmers seize chance to compete

These swimmers were not about to pass up the opportunity to race after a summer of crowd restrictions.

Enterprise Cars Swim Team members — 55 of them — took part in the end-of-summer-season club day at the Enterprise Cars Aquatic Centre on Saturday.

Across the pool, 65 percent of the times were lifetime-best results, which was pleasing for the coaches.

They are hoping that now that the country has gone to the orange “traffic light” setting, swimming meets will be the norm again, and team members will be able to travel to competitions outside the region.

With individual swimmers at the club day allowed a maximum of four events each, the following swimmers achieved a 100 percent personal-best result . . . four from four — Bridie Alexander, Charlotte Alexander, Bella Barclay, Breana Barclay, Owen Booker, Xavier Booker, Finn Hicklin, Ruby Hicklin, Max Latu, Ruby Martin, Ben Plowman, Maddy Symes, Flynn Teutenberg and Brooke Williams.

The following swimmers, who chose to do only three events and achieved the maximum results, were: Gideon Campbell, Briana Latu and Toni Lincoln,

Other notable efforts came from Yahni Brown, who is now only fractionally away from qualifying for the nationals in August for the 100m freestyle.

He slashed two seconds from his previous best time.

Morgan-Maree Tamatea, as a 12-year-old, swam a creditable 200m butterfly, eclipsing the qualifying time for 12-year-olds for Division 2 nationals. Now she has her sights set on the next level up at the age-group nationals, for next year when she will be 13.

Holli MacDonald, Briana Latu, Rio Sasamoto, Maesyn Koia, Matt Sung, Ella Sutton, Nikau Rudge and Lydia Baxendale all did a great job as they had either had Covid-19 or were recovering from injuries.

The coaches were “pretty happy” with the results, and were looking forward to the winter season when a lot of progress was expected.

Thanks were extended to the officials/timekeepers/office people and afternoon tea/food providers, whose contributions were much appreciated by all.