Courtesy: Swimming Victoria
Nunawading was crowned Victoria’s Age champions on Tuesday night, but just moments after celebrating the success with his team, head coach Dean Bryant declared he wanted significant improvement next year.
“Nunawading’s only running at 50 to 60 percent of what we could be,” he said. ““… Our goals at state and national and international levels our very, very high reaching, so for us, we feel like we’re only scratching the surface of what we can achieve.”
The Optus 2019 Victorian Age Championships wrapped at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre with Nunawading topping the combined team scores with 3122 points, from MLC Aquatic (2182) and Northcote (1324). Nunawading swimmers claimed three Age groups: Evan Chee (boys, 12 year olds), Will Sharp (boys, 16 year olds), and Kayla Costa (girls, 17-18 year olds).
However, Bryant said: “it was a good meet without being a great meet”.
“We were very, very strong in a couple of age groups but we’ve definitely got some work to do in some others to make sure that next year we are covering the spread of events,” he said.
“One of our goals is always to be very strong in relays across all of the age groups, win medals across all of the age groups and also to have athletes in every age group in every final.
“So for us there were some outstanding results but definitely some things we’ve got to work on for next year.”
There was also a wide spread Age group champions. Of the 12 categories, the swimmers came from nine clubs: The champions were:
12 year olds: Giselle Davey (Girls, St Leonards), Joshua Wilkinson (Boys, Melbourne H2O)
13 year olds: Sienna Shepherd (Girls, Bayside), Evan Chee (Boys, Nunawading)
14 year olds: Maggie Skewes (Girls, Wangarratta), Jordyn Cargill (Traralgon)
15 year olds: Oliva Lefoe (Girls, MLC), Noah Millard (Boys, MLC)
16 year olds: Abbey Kearney (Girls, Cheltenham), Will Sharp (Boys, Nunawading)
17 year olds: Kayla Costa (Girls, Nunawading), Silas Harris (Northcote)
Melbourne Vicentre won the Itoman Friendship Cup for the Victorian club that scored the most points in races against Japanese club’s swimmers. For these championships, that was the 12-year-old boys and girls. Nunawading had the second most points, followed by MLC.
Final points standings for: combined, boys and girls, can be found here.