Swim coach gets perfect send-off

Mat Bos' Wanganui swim team saved their best for last for their popular coach over the weekend.
Bos leaves today to become head senior coach for the San Antonio Wave Swim Club in Texas. And his team repaid his work over 18 months with a dominating performance in the West Coast championships at the Splash Centre.
"Hardly a swimmer didn't manage a personal best, and most of them were by quite a bit," Boss said. He arrived in Wanganui 18 months ago from the Ohio area and quickly proved himself a popular and successful coach.
He's been replaced by former Levin Swimming Club coach Max Sheehy, a successful coach around the Manawatu for some years and the father of national representative breaststroker Sara-Jane Sheehy.
There were nine Wanganui records set at the championships, some of them twice, with 16-year-old Hannah Roxburgh hugely impressing Bos by crushing the 50, 100 and 200 metres breaststroke records some 10 weeks after breaking an arm. Her 1min 14.69sec 100m record and 34.87sec 50-metre time were both open records.
Others were set by Evon Storey (11-year 50 and 100 fly), Bianca Vettise (12-year 50 fly and 200m IM), and Natasha Tasker (15-year backstroke), and Roxburgh (16-year 50 free).
Bos' former head coach John Ryan contacted Bos and asked him to take the San Antonio job, which will give him overall charge of 96 senior swimmers, with full responsibility for the A team and an overview for the B and C teams.
"I turned him down once, but he came back," Bos said. "But it's been great here and good experience for me. Wanganui, as far as the whole swimming scene is concerned, is on the up right now. The organisation is amazing right now and some of the kids are really starting to do something."
And that's where Roxburgh (Aramoho) comes in. "Right now Hannah Roxburgh would be ranked in the top eight in the women's 100m breaststroke. She's the one right now who would have a good shot at making the final in the senior nationals."
Bos says Roxburgh has improved roughly 6sec on her 100m time since he had been there.
"Her 1min 14sec was by far the best swim of this meet. But there's just not one or two coming on ? as a group they're all making big improvements."
But Roxburgh's feat was noteworthy. "She broke an arm just 12 weeks ago and was out of the water for about six weeks. But she continued training hard, got right back in when she could and just continued right on from where she was," Boss said.