Swimming: Short-course team make big splash

Wanganui's Jazmin Phillips, Shannon Schimanski and Laura O'Keeffe all got medals at the Wellington Short Course championships in Kilbirnie at the weekend.PHOTO/SUPPLIED

The Subway Wanganui Swim Team continue to set their own mark and enforce it with a host of medals on the first weekend of the Wellington short course swim champs at the Regional Aquatic Centre at the weekend.

Since becoming affiliated with the Wellington region at the start of 2014, the Wanganui team's top prospects have continued to maintain their high standards from seasons past in the bigger regional competitions, with the usual suspects picking up two golds, three silvers and two bronze medals down in Kilbirnie.

The task ahead is to see if their team mates can join them in pushing for podium places and there were a number of top-10 finishes and personal bests made among the next tier.

The format for the short-course championships means the event will be held over two weekends so Wanganui took a small team to Wellington for the first leg in their various age-group competitions.

Once again, the star of the show was Shannon Schimanski as the 14-year-old won two golds while breaking both the Wanganui age group and Wanganui open records in the 100m and 200m breaststroke, in times of 1m 14.59s and 2m 40.91s respectively.

To put those efforts in perspective, Schimanski's times were the third fastest of all of females - youth and adult - during the competition, only bettered by two open women's competitors.

Outside of that specialty discipline, Schimanski also claimed a sharp silver medal in the 50m backstroke, 5th in the 100m individual medley and came 8th in the 200m freestyle.

The breaststroke events proved very successful for the Jazmin Phillips, 15, who won silver in both the 15-year-old 100m and 200m in personal best times.

She also showed versatility with a 5th place in the 100m individual medley and 8th in the 400m version.

Wanganui's set of medals was completed by 16-year-old Laura O'Keeffe's with bronze in the 200m and 400m freestyle events, while creating a significant bit of local history.

O'Keeffe's 400m time of 4m 30.07s broke Lisa Hartshorne's 32-year-old Wanganui record by more than a second.

Delighted head coach Andy McLay said he was not even born in 1982 when Hartshorne set that long-standing mark, while the 100m record Schimanski broke was set by fellow Wanganui coach Hannah Roxburgh in 2005.

O'Keeffe had a busy programme with 5th placings in the 50m backstroke, 100m butterfly and the 400m individual medley, along with 6th for the 50m butterfly and 8th place in the 100m breaststroke.

All of the other Wanganui team recorded personal bests with 13-year-old Grace Hogan's the biggest as she took 16.5s off her previous quickest 400m freestyle time.

Sophie Couper, 16, came 7th in the 50m backstroke, 8th in the 400m individual medley and 9th in the 400m freestyle.

Alex Forlong, 13, placed 7th in the girls 100m butterfly and therefore qualified for the NZ Division 2 competition in Dunedin next March.

Niamh Hogan, 14, swam a big personal best in the 50m backstroke to claim 7th, while 14-year-old Cameron Allardice placed 10th in the 50m backstroke.