Swimming: Personal bests all round at club

Laura O'Keeffe set another series of Wanganui records in her recent events for the Wanganui club. PHOTO/FILE

The Subway Wanganui Swimming Club members made an impressive start to their short course season with 27 Wanganui records tumbling at the first two competitions of their Central Region meet.

Formerly known as the 6 Centre Meet, the event on June 28 saw the Wanganui club racing as 'Wellington Black', to recognise their affiliation to the Wellington region earlier in the year.

In a press release, club spokesman Neil Furlong said they finished a creditable fifth with every swimmer recording at least one personal best, while "racing with great spirit" against representative teams from Wellington, Manawatu, Hawkes Bay/Poverty Bay and Taranaki.

Wanganui age group records went to young club veterans Shannon Schimanski, 13, and Jacob Smith, 16, in the breaststroke events, along with Sarya Lower in the 12-year-age group butterfly and freestyle events and Laura O'Keeffe, 16 in freestyle events.

Coach Andy McLay also noted what was just as pleasing was to see the new swimmers who stepped up and recorded massive personal bests of up to 20 seconds.

The following weekend, July 5-6, a team of nine travelled to Mt Maunganui to contest the Greerton Winter Champs.

"This is one of the premier meets of the short course season, with NZ high performance squad swimmer Nathan Capp and outstanding 14-year-old Gabrielle Fa'amausili dominating their respective events," said Furlong.

Records in the 16-year age group fell to O'Keeffe, Smith, Lower and Elena Forlong, while Wanganui also picked up four 1st placings as well as a handful of minor placings over the weekend.

The four Wanganui open records went to O'Keeffe for the 800m freestyle in 9m 24.98s and the 200m freestyle 2m 7.38s, winning both of those events in the 16-and-over age group.

Smith broke Aaron Bunker's 200m breaststroke Wanganui record, set way back in 1995, by over 3.5 seconds in a very swift 2m 24.67s while finishing a creditable third against a very strong field.

Forlong swum 1m 6.64s for the 100m butterfly to win the 15-year-old girls race and continue her good run of form in the butterfly events.

The other race winner was 12-year-old Lower, who took control of the 13-years-and-under 100m freestyle from the start and won in a very fast Wanganui age group record of 1m 1.57s.

"With all swimmers again doing personal bests the Wanganui team came away from the event extremely satisfied," said Furlong.