Swimmer stars at champs
Jacob Bloomfield was the star Southland swimmer at the New Zealand age group championships in Wellington last week.
The team of 12 was the largest team to represent Southland at the nationals for some time.
Swimming Southland coach Jeremy Duncan was pleased with the way the swimmers constructed their races.
Twenty-five of the 28 finals swum after prelims saw the swimmers go faster.
Duncan said being able to swim faster in the finals in the evening was a skill swimmers need to master as they progress in the sport.
Blomfield, 14, of the Murihiku club, continued on from his first national age group championships in 2015 when he won silver in both the 200m and 400m freestyle.
On the first day of competition he won a bronze in the 200m freestyle and from there as the distances got longer Bloomfield did better. His next event was the 400m freestyle on day two and he repeated his 2015 effort and claimed silver.
In the 50m and 100m freestyle sprint events Bloomfield was not so prominent but did make the final of the 100m finishing ninth.
On the last day of competition he took out the 1500m freestyle in a timed final over Bailey Wang of North Shore Swimming Club (Auckland) by a massive 19.1 seconds.
This gave Jacob the gold medal and New Zealand title in this event.
To top it off he picked up a silver medal as part of the Southland boys 15-and-under 800m freestyle relay team which also included Jack Corkery, Storm Le Quesne and Daniel Strang.
The stunning performance at nationals also qualified him for the Swimming NZ Talent ID Camp by scoring over 600 FINA Points.
FINA Points is a ranking system where the world record is 1000 points and then points are calculated by a set formula back from this point.
Jack Corkery, 15, also of the Murihiku Club has being making huge progress over the last 18 months and finally has some rewards to show for it.
He made the finals in all eight of his events showing that he is the most consistent and versatile swimmer in Southland at the moment.
Corkery made the finals in freestyle, backstroke and the individual medleys, every time he entered the water and swam faster than he had previously.
He broke his national medal duck and won bronze in both the 200m and 400m individual medleys along with the already mentioned relay silver.
Corkery was agonisingly close to selection for the Talent ID Camp scoring three lots of FINA points in the 590’s, the closest being 597 in the 200m individual medley.
Yet another Murihiku Swimming Club member, Amelia McKenzie, 14, was as close to winning a medal as you can get and not get it, when she finished fourth in the 100m butterfly by 1/100th of a second.
Over the week four swimmers achieved qualifying times for next year’s New Zealand Open Championships, which is a positive step considering this year Southland only had one swimmer qualify.
Corkery, Blomfield, McKenzie and Emily Joyce are the Southlanders who qualified.