Competing from February 14-16, Lower also took 13.6 seconds off her personal best in the 400m freestyle, which lifted her seven places to 16th in the national rankings.
After a good swim in the 50m butterfly, she came out of the gold medal win in the relay with a lot of confidence and earned top-10 results in the 50m freestyle (ninth), 200m freestyle (eighth), individual medley (eighth) and 100m freestyle (10th).
She therefore broke the Wanganui records for 12-year-olds in the 100m and 200m with times of 1m 05.16s and 2m 23.09s respectively.
Lower was also part of the Wellington B team which came fourth in the medley relay, swimming the butterfly leg.
Another Wanganui connection at the championships was Collegiate Year 9 student Rebecca Brown, who was representing her Stratford club from Taranaki.
Brown has been training with the Subway Wanganui team since starting as a boarder at Collegiate in January.
She made six Top 10 placings in individual races, which included six personal bests.
Brown gained two fourth placings in the 200m freestyle (2m 19.89s) and 100 backstroke (1m 12.92s)
She also placed sixth in both the 400m freestyle (with an 8.7 second personal best) and the 100m freestyle, came eighth in the 50m freestyle and ninth in 50m backstroke.
The youngster was also part of the Taranaki Regional Relay team which came sixth in the freestyle and eighth in the medley.
New Subway Wanganui Swim team coach Andy McLay was impressed at the junior championships.
"When you see young swimmers improving their national rankings and swimming personal bests it is very encouraging, and both Sarya and Rebecca had some very good swims at this meet."
The Wanganui club hosts its signature meet at the Splash Centre this weekend.
They will race over two sessions on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.
