Traralgon Swimmers Rule at Nationals

18 year old Jeremy Meyer and 13 year old Georgia Tsebelis were the standout performers for the Traralgon Swimming Club at the recent Australian Age Championships held at the 2000 Olympic pool in Sydney. Jeremy broke a Victorian, Country and Gippsland record in winning the Boy’s 17/18 years 200 metre Breaststroke in 2.14.29 under the previous time by 0.60 seconds. In nail biting finish Jeremy finished 2^nd in the 100 metre event in the time of 1.02.81. As a result of his outstanding performances Jeremy was picked as a member of the Australian All Star team and will travel to Somoa and Canada later in the year for competitions against a number of Pacific nations including the powerful USA team.

Jeremy was full of praise for the Traralgon Coaching panel – “ I swam at the Commonwealth Games trials 2 weeks ago after my first 3 month stint at the AIS and came back to Traralgon for the period between that event and the Age Nationals. To swim faster at the second event speaks volumes of the quality of coaching and coaches here in Traralgon to get me up into race mode after such an important and mentally challenging event such as the Games Trials. I am extremely happy with my results.”

Georgia, swimming her first Age Nationals, was outstanding winning silver in the Girls 200 metre Individual Medley (2.25.63) and again in the 200 metre Backstroke (2.24.73) where she broke a Gippsland record. The Backstroke event was one of the closest events of the whole meet with third place only 0.04 behind Georgia and fourth another 0.01. Georgia’s results were great reward for a year of hard work and success at all levels of competition – Regional, Country, State and now National.

Other Traralgon swimmers also performed in an outstanding manner particularly the newer swimmers to the National team. 13 year old Trent Morrow finished 9^th in Boys 50 metre freestyle (26.29) and Maggie O’Keefe 11^th in the same 13 year event for girls (27.89). Daniel Gill (1.17.86) and Brayden Haney(2.51.52) finished top 20 in the 13 years 100 and 200 metre Breaststroke events respectively; Matt Norwood - 15 years(1.03.55), Jordan Radosavljevic – 16 years(1.02.26) and Alice Lieshout – 17 years(1.07.95) all swam best times in their 100 Backstroke events, and Brayden Waltham(17), Stephanie Morgan(17), Kirsten Lieshout(18) all swam well to complement the 12 individual swimmers representing the Club.

Additional swimmers Stephanie Spehar, Zoe Trembath, Nicole Moon and Dylan Wyatt made the trip to swim relays only and the Club was rewarded with some outstanding results, in particular the Boys 18 years/under 4 x 100 Medley Relay. Jordan Radosavljevic(1.02.16 – Back), Jeremy Meyer (1.03.18 – Breast), Brayden Waltham (57.88 – Fly) and Dylan Wyatt (53.72 – Free) swam a total time of 3.56.94 to finish 5^th less than 2 seconds behind a medal. The Girls 18 years/under 4 x 100 Free Relay of 17 year old Stephanie Morgan (1.00.53), 13 year old Georgia Tsebelis (1.00.26), 17 year old Alice Lieshout ( 1.01.70) and 13 year old Maggie O’Keefe ( 1.01.45) broke the Open Country and Gippsland record with a combined time of 4.03.94 in finishing 12^th.

Traralgon Head Coach was glowing in his assessment of the Meet – “This is the 8^th year in succession the Club has won medals at a National level. We have had some wonderful swimmers in the past – Sam Ashby, Jeremy Saunders, Andrew Cameron, Jeremy Meyer, Kirsten Lieshout and now Georgia Tsebelis – some who have won in multiple years, who continue to deliver for the Club on the big stage. We are very proud of our Coaching program in obtaining these results, however we are even more proud to continually take teams of 12 – 16 swimmers who have qualified to swim at this level. It is a great result for them and gives them more experience than any other meet throughout the year. Even if they don’t medal, and most don’t , it is great for their resume to have National Finalist or Swimmer next to their name."

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