Life is going swimmingly
While Stacey Lodge, 10, swam one of her seven races at the New Zealand Junior Swimming Festival, her emotional parents stood poolside.
At that very minute two years before, on February 19, 2015 their then eight-year-old daughter was having heart surgery at Auckland’s Starship Hospital.
‘‘We are absolutely proud. It’s a pretty special thing,’’ Stacey’s mother Kylie Lodge said.
Stacey is one of the youngest competitive swimmers in Hawera and the only swimmer to represent the club at the NZ Junior Festival.
In the two years since her operation Stacey has progressed far in life and in swimming.
In fact, in that emotion-filled race she bettered one of her mother’s personal best times, a time she achieved a week before at the Masters Games.
‘‘It was by seven-hundredths of a second, so we’ve got a new champion in the house,’’ Kylie laughed.
Stacey also proudly beat every personal record in each of her seven races at the national festival in Rotorua.
Born with a hole in her heart, Stacey developed a fear of water.
‘‘When I was little I hated the water. I couldn’t get my head under,’’ Stacey said.
She used to get sick all the time, her mother said. ‘‘That’s why she didn’t do swimming, because she used to have fevers and she used to get pneumonia quite a bit, and just be a really sickly girl and then after heart surgery, she was a completely different girl’’
Three weeks after the one centimetre hole in the top chamber of her heart was closed Stacey swam at her school swimming sports and gained placings.
‘‘Stacey’s life has been completely different,’’ Kylie said. ’’She had heart surgery in February, in July we started doing a couple of mornings swimming a week, so it was from then on she really got into it.’’
Kylie, who trained under the same Hawera swimming coach as Stacey at her age, said she’d never pushed her daughter to do swimming, it was her choice and she loved it.
‘‘She just picked up on it,’’ Kylie said.
Stacey is best at breaststroke but will be working on most strokes including her butterfly stroke which she was yet to perfect.
‘‘I got disqualified from two of my seven races,’’ Stacey laughed.
Kylie said this was to do with her age and her technique, and said it would come with time.
‘‘She doesn’t have the strength yet,’’ she said.
There were 33 swimmers from Stratford and eight from New Plymouth who competed at the annual festival, which although is nationwide, happens at four different zonal locations at once.
‘‘Stacey's life has been completely different.’’
Kylie Lodge