Category: News

Full report here.

Saturday 19th

Matt and Katie in action in their individual events and the 18U girls 4×100 Medley relay team finished the carnival off with a bang for Abbotsleigh. Time to rest up now. Is it OK for the athletes to eat chocolate tomorrow Leanne?

Friday 18th

Bec, Annabelle, Kaea, Keely, Matt, Tash and Katie were in action in their individual events. The mighty 13-14yr girls lining up for two 4x50m FS relay teams. Annabelle had Weet-Bix for breakfast and set 2 new massive PBs. Tasha and Katie made it 1-2 on the podium in the 50m FS. Anybody know what they had for breakfast?

Thursday 17th

The focus was on individual events today with Imy, Annabelle, Kaea, Rani, Bec, Geoff, Katie, Tash, Keely and Katie all in action. Geoff and Katie continued their fantastic run of PBs into their respective finals. Mega congratulations to Katie with a podium finish in the 100m FS!!

Wednesday 16th

So many ‘Abbotslays’ in the pool today, and the announcer still can’t pronounce us right. Shaun, Matt and Zoe did their individual events and then came 5 team Abb relays. 20min queue in the warm up pool for a dive. Welcome back Leanne.

Tuesday 15th

Leanne crook so Brandon alone. Katie on fire again, this time in 12-13yrs 200m IM – can you be ‘on fire’ in the water? Geoff backed up super fast after an emergency pool closure to swim a fantastic 100m 16yrs BS final. Tash, Kaitlyn, Bec and Katie 4×100 18U FS Relay – 12th. Even more great support from team members not swimming. Parents a bit lost after ‘strangers’ occupied the area in front of the Abbotsleigh banner. Get well soon Leanne!

Monday 14th

Katie, Shaun, Matt, Rani and Kaitlyn start their individual events. Zoe, Ellie, Keely and Tashi combine for the 4×100 Medley Relay. Matt, Shaun, Kaea and Harry line up for the 4×100 Medley Relay. Great support from team members not swimming. And the new Abbotsleigh Club banner is christened.

Sunday 13th

Bus to Homebush in new uniforms. Collected accreditation passes (well done Brandon for overcoming some challenges). A ‘feel the water’ swim. Never felt the water at Homebush before?

Friday 11th

BIG party at Matt’s place. BUT no fizzy drinks or lollies for the athletes (Leanne’s orders). New uniforms presented (well done Helen and Liz). Poem from Leanne. Speech from Brandon. Despite a house full of swimmers there was even food left at the end.

Nationals swimmers and their parents had an afternoon of education and excitement on Friday when Matthew and Andrew Abood came to visit. The two brothers gave hands on coaching of skills and race techniques, spoke about mental preparation for major competitions, and answered questions.

Hi All

I’d like to take the opportunity to introduce and welcome Rafael Rodrigues (Raf) to our coaching team.
Raf’s qualifications include;
· Bronze accredited coach with Swimming Australia.
· Degree in Physical education
· Aust Swim teacher and assessor accreditation
· Senior First aid certificate

Raf has many years’ experience and success in coaching all levels of competitive swimming from Metro, State and National level.

Raf will initially be coaching our Bronze squad in the mornings with the aim to move into more afternoon work come term 2, if all goes well. We plan for Raf and Chris Austin to develop strong relations with the swimmers of our new improved junior development group and rebuild a quality program from the bottom up. Raf will also take on other coaching groups at times.

To meet Raf please come on down to the pool on either Monday, Wednesday or Friday morning.

Our president at the Swimming Australia awards with Bobby and Kenny who both spoke to our team at Abbotsleigh recently.

A big congrats to Lachi for his qualification on the weekend for open water nationals. Also a big thank you to Callum for his support and coaching to lachi on the day.

Kenny To visit to Team Abbotsleigh, January 15^th 2014

Summary – by Leanne Speechley

Part 1 – His Journey!

• Everyone should race IM
• He was not instantaneously amazing – had to work really hard – especially due to his 171cm height
• Made a lot of great friends through swimming as a youngster which made him want to come to the pool more often
• Focused mainly on swimming from the age of 12
• From age 6 to 11 was very bad at swimming
• To overcome his fears of racing bigger and stronger swimmers he focused on himself and on being the best swimmer he could be.
• He made sure he trained harder and smarter than everyone else
• 14 years – 7-8 sessions per week, 16yrs added gym and now does 9 sessions plus gym.
• Found the transition from open to age tough. From racing 18 year olds to Michael Phelps and Ryan Locte
• His favourite Australian swimmer is Ian Thorpe (the boss) – a lot of respect for him for what he did at such a young age and was chuffed to break his IM record at 16.
• Making his first Australian team was like nothing he could have imagined. “I hoped and dreamed and now it’s a reality.  It’s really special”
• However it has not always been smooth sailing…….There has been a lot of disappointments along the way
• “Missing Olympics in 2012 (after being the favourite leading into trials) made it clear to me I needed to be able handle disappointment and use the experience to move forward and not harp on them.”
• You need to always look forward, to the next day. Always have goals – don’t harp on failure or success.
• His current goal is to make the Commonwealth Games Team and swim well at trials.

 

Part 2 – Main Topic he wished to discuss

A quote by Robert Kiyosaki:

• “The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire, the size of your dream and how you handle disappointment along the way”

1. You must have a strong burning desire. A passion for swimming.
2. The size of your dream should help motivate you. Help bring out the best in you. Force you to challenge yourself. Inspire you.
3. How you handle disappointment – it’s very important to be prepared. To have coping strategies. Manage injuries.

• Swimming is a big part of our lives so we need to be prepared, focused and enjoy it.

 

Part 3 – Questions

• School vs. swimming – He handled the balance by focussing on time management, worked very hard on school work and swimming. Never made excuses he had exams – just made sure he was organised.
• Realised if he wanted to be successful at swimming he had to put the time and work in.
• You need to make choices day to day. E.g. – “do I go to Macca’s every day during the holidays with my mates or do I go swimming training?
• Swimming is not a part time thing – it is like a job.
• He avoided other sports that would affect his swimming. He did a bit of tennis, basketball and water polo.
• SC vs. LC – he loves SC. Loves the action pack style of it. Loves all the turns. He would make Olympics short course if he could! He does realise LC is more important due to teams being LC.
• He missed out on little things like a party or a movie here and there but now is travelling the world and has great mates and great people in his life.
• His favourite stroke is Fr. He would love to be a 50M freestyler!

Part 4 – His IM strategy

• Fly –  Let it flow
• Bk – fast rating
• BR – long and legs
• Fr – balanced and build
• All turns – you must focus on the turn a good 10-15 metres out from the wall and commit to the turn. Use the underwater dolphin kick as it’s the fastest way to travel in water. Keep arms strong on wall and don’t collapse and rest on walls.

Kenny finished his visit with swimming and turn demonstrations, coaching and a very gracious thank you. His parting message to the swimmers as they gathered around him hanging off every word was;

“I have enjoyed this visit the most out of any visits. Please don’t just take the information and forget it – please try and practice the things we have discussed and focus on getting better than you are today. Make it happen. Work at it!”

Perfect weather today for:

· Swimming(!), thanks to coaches Chris Austin and Tom;
· yummy BBQ breakfast, thanks to Chris and Leslie Fydler; and
· laser tag and bumper cars, thanks to Helen, Bob, Rita, Maree and Dan for driving the kids (and to Nilu for staying back for clean up after breakfast).

Here are some photos to mark the end of a great week, thanks all. And big thanks to Daven for running and organising all of the dry side of things!