Swimming: Ciara Smith rewarded for stellar year

Ciara Smith collecting her many awards at Swimming Northland's annual awards. Photo/Julie Paton

Ciara Smith continues to rack up the accolades in the pool.

The Northland swimmer picked up armfuls of awards at Swimming Northland's annual awards as well as getting some help towards achieving her next goal.

Ciara is off to the Youth Commonwealth Games in the Bahamas later this month, where she will represent New Zealand in 100m and 200m breaststroke.

The trip costs just under $6000 and she and her family faced bills of more than $15,000 last season for her to attend national and overseas meets.

Her club, Northwave, are sizzling sausages and selling cakes and raffle tickets to help with the cost of being a national representative.

She was Northland's Swimmer of the Year for the past season, and picked up trophies for coming the closest to or breaking Northland and national age group records at national meets (she equalled the New Zealand age group 16 year girls record in 50m breaststroke at the NZ Age Group Championships in March this year).

She also won the Martin Wilson Trophy for the swimmer breaking a race record by the greatest percentage margin at the Northland Age Group Championships, and the Richard Dunkerton LM Trophy for earning the highest FINA points at the national age groups.

Ciara won stroke trophies for all the breaststroke distances, plus 50m, 100m and 200m freestyle, and 200m and 400m individual medley trophies.

She was recently named in the Swimming NZ national development squad and will travel again with the New Zealand team to the Australian State Teams Nationals in Canberra in September.

In just over a week Ciara will head to the Bahamas where she'll compete against some of the world's top youth swimmers. Mum Tracy Blaauw says Ciara's very excited and can hardly sleep, in the lead-up to the trip.

Northland's Official of the Year Shield winner, and Swimming Northland chairwoman, Carlrine Gillespie of Dargaville, also heads overseas this month on swimming related business - to Budapest in Hungary, where she'll officiate at swimming's top event, the FINA World Swimming Championships.

Meanwhile many others were rewarded for productive seasons.

Bay of Islands' Emilia Finer was named Junior Swimmer of the Year while Monica Cooper (coach), Beth Finer (administrator) and Denis Garner (emerging official) were rated the top of their category for the year.

BOI's Samantha Turner took home the Mick Parr Memorial Trophy for Swimmer Service to Sport while Annabell Simpson received the Champion of Champions Trophy.

Bream Bay Swimming Club are now the Crawford-Woodman Cup holders while Northwave collected the OW Wright Shield Club Points Trophy.