Last weekend we witnessed Wellington's fastest junior swimmers compete against each other and for their clubs at the 2024 Swimming Wellington Junior Championships. Held at Coastlands Aquatic Centre, this year’s competition not only delivered many amazing swims, but also showed the future of swimming for both Wellington region and New Zealand as a whole. It was great to see the determination of all these young junior swimmers, supporting each other and making themselves proud.
There was plenty of talent on show at these Championships. It was fantastic to see 20 outer-region clubs from all over the North Island travel and compete at the event. Thank you to these clubs who made the trip down last weekend:
Aquabladz NP, Blenheim, Central Hawkes Bay, Coast, Dolphin, Feilding, Hawera, Ice Breakers, Kiwi West, Levin, Manurewa, Nelson South, North Shore, Palmerston North, Phoenix Aquatics, St Peter’s, Tasman, Trojans and United.
It was awesome to see talent from outside the region performing at the event. One highlight of the competition was seeing Grayson Coulter, from North Shore Swimming Club, compete. Grayson was a stand out performer at the event, winning seven out of his seven events. Grayson wasn’t the only one who produced some incredible times over the course of the championships, with the following swimmers making waves in their relevant age groups.
Reagan Liang, 11 (Coast), Nathan Hu, 12 (Capital), Grayson Coulter, 12 (North Shore) Angelina See, 9 (Phoenix), and Rebecca Yu, 12 (PCA) all won every one of their respective events they swam.
The last event of the championships, the Girl’s 12 & Under 400 Freestyle, saw an amazing swim from Rebecca Yu, 12 (PCA) who broke the Wellington age group record, previously held by Hilary Todd back in 1994. Rebecca achieved a time of 4:33.77, a fantastic way to finish the championships.
Both Porirua City Aquatics and Capital Swim Club were in hot form showing their depth throughout the championships. They were fighting it out for the top spot. PCA have been the holders of the Porirua City Aquatics Cup since 2018 - the second year SW hosted the Junior Championships. It was so tight that it came down to the final session, but in the end, Capital Swim Club won the top club trophy, coming away with a total of 1,266.5 points to Porirua City Aquatics' 1,139.5 points.
Not only did Capital Swim Club win the top honours at the Junior Championships, they also won The Eyeline Cup for top club at the Junior Sprint Challenge. Amazing work!
A huge congratulations to everyone who took part in this year's 2024 Swimming Wellington Junior Championships. It was such an inspiring event and was great to see the hard work all the swimmers put in through their performances. A big thank you to all the volunteers who helped out last weekend, it really does take an army of volunteers to run a competition like this. Thank you to our runners, door people, timekeepers, technical officials, starters, referees, recorders, everyone in the AOD Room, medal and ribbon Helpers, amongst many more.
Special recognition to Louise Tresch, who has been the events manager at Swimming Wellington for the last two years and will be finishing up in the role following this event. We thank her for all her hard work and dedication towards the role and swimming community, always making people smile and feel welcome. We hope to see you around the pool at events sometime in the future!
Swimming Wellington looks forward to seeing you all at the 2024 Swimming Wellington Relay Championships at WRAC!
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