Category: News

Short course is a wrap. We continued to show our learnings from this season at Australian Short course in Sydney.

Individual qualifiers Zac Attard, Shaun Champion and Audrey Jackson all achieved personal beat swims at the championship.

Audrey Jackson broke through with a 0.25 second best in the 50m freestyle. Audrey improved her ranking by 14 placings at her first Open meet. This great swim gave her a position in the B final. Her first finals experience at state or national level. Audrey qualified at Senior state two weeks prior. She put her reflections into action, made the race plan adjustments and won her heat. She finished 10th in her B final. Congratulations Audrey! It was great to see you soak up your finals experience.

Zac Attard swam the B final in the 200m Freestyle, on the opening night of competition. Zac exhibited his skills in this event. Zac improved from senior state, by 2.2 seconds and swim faster in the final. Congratulations Zac!

Shaun also improved from senior state. Shaun won silver in the 200m Freestyle, starting is week off with a bang, improving his personal best by 1 second. Shaun used technical improvements to help maintain his high standards and accumulated great racing intent.

He placed 4th in the 50m and 100m butterfly, both with season best times.

For the first time we swam 2 mixed relays, both placing in the Top 10.

Medley relay swimmers in relay order…

Shaun Champion, Ryan Hansen, Jasmin Foster, Audrey Jackson.

Freestyle relay swimmers in relay order…

Zac Attard, Shaun Champion, Syesha Anthony, Piper Marinas.

All swimmers produced their best efforts and lifted for each other. It was a great bonding experience. It was great to watch races with our swimmers, to talk about racing, the technical requirements and see their motivation to improve themselves. They could see what they need to do. We look forward to next year, as many more swimmers approach this level of competition. 

Congratulations to all our Short Course competitors. 

Go Team Abb!!!

Congratulations to our 17 swimmers who raced at Junior State on the weekend! This is the final event of our short course season for our juniors. It was fantastic to see swimmers swim to their race plans and put into practice what had been practiced at training. We worked hard at implementing our dives, turns, and changeovers that we have been practicing and we made sure we finished hard into the walls. Swimmers did a great job warming up and racing together, and cheering on their teammates, demonstrating great unity in Team ABB. Many positives can be taken from the weekend as well as many learnings for future improvement.

Top Ten Finishes:

April Avery – 9^th place – 12yrs Girls 50 Breaststroke

Penelope Waterhouse – 8^th place – 10yrs Girls 50 Backstroke

Girls 10-11 4×50 Medley Relay – 10^th place (2.97 second improvement) – Penelope Waterhouse, Zoe Durbidge, Alicia Chung, Alice Liu

Girls 12 4×50 Medley – 11^th place – Isabella Zhao, Gigi Windeyer, April Avery, Abby Philpot

Girls 12 4×50 Freestyle Relay – 11^th place – Abby Philpot, Gigi Windeyer, Bailey Butler, Emma Bao

Thank you to our parents for supporting swimmers throughout the meet and assisting with timekeeping when required.

Go Team ABB!!!

Kaizen
Dare Greatly
Unity
Fun

On 1^st to the 3^rd of September the Senior Abbotsleigh swim team went to Sydney Olympic Park to race at Senior State championships This is a competition with all the best in the state area.

The Abbotsleigh swimming club had a team of 16 swimmers and 6 relay teams. It was a meet full of fun moments and with a lot of good energy. The swimmers showed the ability to embrace the meet and focus when needed.

The team support that was felt throughout the meet was great and once again TEAM Abbotsleigh showed their spirit in staying together and supporting each teammate.

Our relay teams up their game and we had 4 teams coming in the top ten and mention to our girls 13-15 4×50 Fs relay that with an awesome team PB broke the 2 minute mark and came from 10^th into 7^th place overall. Also the boys 17& over Fs relay from the last heat end up coming 4^th overall

The Abbotsleigh swimming Club had a total of 15 Top 10

Our top 5 swimmers:

Tinglan Chen: 5^th 100 Bs & 5^th 200 Bs

Audrey Jackson: 5^th 50 Fs

Shaun Champion: 2^nd 200 IM / 1^st 50 Fly / 2^nd 100Fs/ 3^rd 100 IM/ 1^st 100 Fly

Zach Attard: 5^th 200 Fs

We would like to give a special mention to all the swimmers that participate on the team relays, it was great to see their amazing team effort into representing our club in the best way they could. Relays are a very important part of swimming; they define the bond between teammates and ourclub values. – Kaizen, Dare greatly, Unity, Fun.

Go team ABB.

Relay teams:
Girls A 13-15 4×50 Fs relay – Syesha Anthony / Audrey Jackson / Grace Black / Piper Marinas
Girls B 13-15 4×50 Fs relay – Claudia Liu/Chanel Kang/Tinglan Chen/ Noor khara

Girls A 13-15 4×50 Medley relay – Chanel kang/ Claudia Liu / Audrey Jackon/ Syesha Anthony
Girls B 13-15 4×50 Medley relay-Grace Black/Tinglan Chen/Piper Marinas/Matilda Mamo

Boys A 16&O 4×50 Fs relay – Shaun Champion/Zachary Attard/Ryan Hanse/Jensen Goodchild
Boys A 16&) 4×50 Medley relay-Zachary Attard/Ryan Hansen/Shaun Champion/Jensen Goodchild

Congratulations Shaun Champion, Dolphin #843!

Shaun’s outstanding performances at the World Trials granted him selection to World Champs in Japan. Shaun’s events were 50m and 100m butterfly at the Fukuoka World Championships. Shaun would compete on day 1 and day 6 of the campaign. With a five-week preparation from selection, the Australian Dolphin’s team met in Saga, a smaller prefect of Japan.

Saga was a great place to prepare and to become familiar living as a team. We had setbacks of lightning strikes and emergency landslide warnings, which we received in Japanese scribe on our phones at 6am on morning…the warning was for a town nearby. The rain didn’t stop for the first few days which turned out being helpful, allowing us to acclimatise slowly to very hot conditions. Here the routine was eat, sleep, swim and repeat. The team were bonding well, and we were building our energy towards something special.

Shaun and I were able to enjoy a Tea ceremony, and authentic protocol for making tea and enjoying tea, something treasured in Japanese culture. We also learnt how to write Japanese calligraphy by local school children. Shaun used his Japanese heritage, speaking quite well to the high school students…they were most impressed that he knew their native tongue.

We arrived at the Competition venue in Fukuoka, and it was fast paced, especially compared to Saga. Lots of people, big city life and very hot!  Warm up pool was the same too…very hot and space limited.

Our Team ABB value of KAIZEN is a Japanese word meaning continuous improvement. KAIZEN brings out our love of learning and working at making things better. We are full of experiences, both in performance and culturally, and are motivated to move forward.

Daring Greatly is definitely something you do at a World Championships. Everyone is at their best and working at their performance execution. Shaun comes away with great learnings from this exposure and his ability to put his best together when the time came. Whilst outcomes are not shown on the scoreboard, the takeaways are profound. I also have my learnings to bring back and will keep growing from the experience.

I was privileged to lead the Mixed 4×100 Freestyle team, selected a heat team and final team and having this unique combination got us a position in the final and then to finish ahead of the world.

Flynn Southam, Jack Cartwright, Madi Wilson and Meg Harris played their role in the heats and then it was up to the final team, Jack Cartwright, followed by Kyle Chalmers, changing over with Shayna Jack and Mollie O’Callaghan. The outcome from all 7 athletes delivered a World Record, Gold medal winning achievement. This team broke Australia’s World Record from Budapest, Hungary in 2022. The team swam in a different order to the previous record holding team. Another chance to sing Advance Australia Fair.

The Dolphins team is a special unit, there was purpose to our actions from team selection to our final team dinner. We worked for each other, we did what needed to happen and the outcome is written in history. The most successful Australian team, we beat USA for the second time ever, we won 13 gold medals.

An outstanding achievement.

Go Aussie Dolphins!

Go Team ABB!

KAIZEN

DARE GREATLY
UNITY

FUN

Happy Swimming 🙂

We had a great return to the Abb invitational Meet on the 6^th August. Lots of energy and excitement filled the aquatic centre.

It was fantastic to see our Abb values upheld throughout the day. Swimmers were daring greatly in their racing and always thinking about how they can continuously improve (KAIZEN) by implementing what they had been practicing at training. We had lots of fun in our relays and around the pool, and it was great to hear our team cheering showing great unity in the Golden Flipper relay. The Golden Flipper relay is a unique event that saw clubs vying for the Golden Flipper trophy. Let’s fight for it next year!

Our fantastic parents and older swimmers helped to make the day a success. Many roles were undertaken beforehand and throughout the day and we thank our community for being so willing to get involved and help the day run smoothly. It was great to see our swimmers leave smiling after a fantastic meet. We thank the clubs that came and participate in our event, and we look forward to an even bigger and better Abbotsleigh Invitational in 2024!

On the 14^th – 16^th of July, the Abbotsleigh swimming club team joined all the best clubs in the metropolitan area and participated at the NSW metropolitan championships. We had a total of 14 swimmers competing at these championships. This meet was at the end of the school holidays and the teams plan was to do some good quality work during the break and be ready for these championships. We knew that SC metropolitan championships is a tough one where there is combined age groups and a lot of intensity swim after swim. We had great results across all age groups with PB’s, top 10 finishes and a bronze medal.

Result totals:

Medal – 1 Bronze – Tinglan Chen- 100BS

Top 5 finishes: 2

Top 10 finishes: 7

Our energy was always up throughout the 3 days meet, athletes understood the importance of recovering well and getting themselves in the best spot of being successful by keeping their body well refuelled during 3 days of competition. This is an important part of athlete development.

It is important to say that this is a meet where Junior and Senior swimmers are together and more than ever the team was always supportive to each other and showed amazing camaraderie across all the different ages, from Junior to seniors if it was an Abbotsleigh swimmer everyone was watching and cheering.

The work will keep on going and now we start our preparation for Senior and Junior State championships. Go Abbotsleigh!

Congratulations Team Abb!

We welcome coach Callum as our new team member with a wonderful display of racing throughout the weekend. Our swimmers have been focusing on holding their technique and challenging themselves at a variety of races, including longer events and branching out to different stroke and especially the 200IM.All your coaches loved what you brought to each race.

There were many highlights, the standout was how you supported each other. It was great to see you learning from each other and from each race. We love relays and for the first time we were able to enter A, B, C and D relays for girls 8-13 years and we had relays in each age bracket. The energy on both days for these relays was fantastic. 

Six relay teams finished inside the top 10…

It is worth mentioning that 9 swimmers placed 4th too…what a great result for Team ABB!

It is worth mentioning that 9 swimmers placed 4th too…what a great result for Team ABB!

Thank you to parents who had official roles at the meet and to all families for contributing to making the weekend a fun experience. Thank you to our coaches, Jay, showing is belief in each swimmer and for Callum, to take in all that is Team Abb! Great energy all round

The Abbotsleigh team flew to the Gold coast to participate in the 2023 Age national championships, everyone was excited and ready to go. The Sun was shining and it was time for our swimmers show what they are capable of.

Knowing that this is an intense meet in terms of competition our swimmers applied what they know and have learned during the season. They DARED GREATLY in their races and were positive and determined towards their racing intent. They were UNITED in their commitment to being positive and determined and worked together pre competition and during the meet.

All of our values shined through in our relays, whether they were supporting them or taking part and absolutely backing themselves and their teammates…we could see them having FUN and it is why our relay focus is/was important.

Everyone delivered personal best efforts! There were season bests, relay split best, lifetime bests…we had it all. We also had a representative in a B final. Congratulations Claudia Liu for her performance in 50m breaststroke. Outstanding stuff!

We could not be happier with these swimmers’ performance and attitude towards their swimming and the sport. Looking forward to what comes next.

Thank you also to all parents, without your support and commitment this would not be possible. The word TEAM includes each and every one of you and we appreciate your support towards us and our club.

Go Abbotsleigh !!

Congratulations to our Junior State Team…we had 25 swimmers take part in the two day event.

With our relay focus…we had outstanding performances from everyone…including:

Individually we had multiple swimmers win their heat in great style.

We had 19 personal best long course swims.

Alice Liu placed in the Top 10 for 50m breaststroke. Congratulations Alice!

Our swimmers endured throughout the weekend finishing super fast in the 10×50 relays. We will continue to build on this experience.

It was great to see our swimmers give their best for Team ABB!

Thank you to our parents for supporting your swimmers and giving them a chance to stretch themselves for their wins!

On the 20th of March we presented our Junior State team, this group of 25 swimmers will be going to SOPAC on the 25th and 26th of March to race at the NSW Junior State Championships. The team is ready to go and as they go through their fine tuning in the last week, the message has been consistent, and it will be about competing with intent, uphold our club values and have an amazing time.

They are ready and we cannot wait to see this group of amazing people showing their fire and what they are capable of.

Let’s go team ABB !