Swim club finish fifth
Warragul Swimming Club alongside Gippsland Swimming Inc hosted the three-day 2021 Victorian Country Championships at the Warragul Leisure Centre from January 23 to 25. In what was a warm weekend, the venue welcomed 550 swimmers from 36 Victorian clubs to compete.
This major Swimming Victoria competition requires swimmers to have a qualifying time for each event. Warragul Swimming Club had 36 qualify for the championships, who swam a total of 117 individual events, with another 14 members joining on the last day to contribute to the relay teams.
Warragul’s Jess Emmet swam extremely well to win two silver and a bronze medal, Warragul’s Callum Halloran-Lavelle had an extensive 17 race program and finished the event with an impressive 11 medal haul with three gold, six silver and two bronze medals, achieving this with five personal best times. Corbin Blake contributed with a bronze medal, Riley Griffin a bronze medal and Mackaylen Di Sisto a silver medal.
A high point of the weekend was Warragul Swimming Clubs relay performances, reinforcing their focus on team swimming. The relay teams won one gold (16&u 200m freestyle), three silver (women’s 17&o 200m medley, boys 16&u 200m medley and men’s 400m freestyle) and three bronze medals (girls 12&u 200m freestyle, girls 14&u 200m freestyle and girls 14&u medley).
A major highlight was the mens 4 x 100m freestyle relay, the blue-ribbon event with Callum Halloran-Lavelle, Riley Griffin, Noah Jones and Josh Wight taking silver in a highly competitive field.
The weekend saw some extremely fast racing with significant personal best times, Corbin Blake had a great meet taking 9.8 seconds off his 200m individual medley and 9.49 seconds off his 100m breaststroke while Sam Wells flew down the pool taking 7.25 seconds off his 100m butterfly and 6.74 seconds from his 100m freestyle and Patrick Griffin took 7.7 seconds off his PB in 100 m breaststroke.
Cailean Thomas had a fast swim in his 100m backstroke taking 6.06 seconds off his time, Chloe Joiner had great swims in her 100m breaststroke and 100m butterfly taking 4.92 seconds and 4.40 seconds off respectively and Ellie Holden had a 4.9 second PB in her 100m freestyle event. In all, Warragul swimmers shared 68 personal best times.
Overall Warragul finished in fifth place, an increase of two places since the 2020 championships.
This event had been scheduled to be hosted by Mildura Swimming Club, however due to COVID-19 they withdrew in November, with Warragul called upon to host the event instead. It was organised by a small team to comply with DHHS COVID-19 regulations, with a maximum capacity of 1000 people in attendance to the event each day as clubs travelled from as far away as Warrnambool, Wodonga, Wangaratta, Geelong, Lakes Entrance and Swan Hill to compete.
Warragul Swimming Club is proud of their home facilities at the Warragul Leisure Centre, the coaching team, led by Paul Myers and the supporting community. The Swimming Australia approved timing equipment, which was purchased three years ago has given the club a significant edge over all country Victorian clubs.
The club could not host these events without the wonderful volunteers of their families and the support of community organisations.
Warragul Swimming Club will be hosting their next event on Saturday 20th February, which will then be followed by the Gippsland Championships on March 20 and 21, also in Warragul.