2016 Meet report for Divs

Meet Report – Division II Nationals 2016

 Division ll Nationals were held down in the Deep South in Invercargill this year. Although it was a long way to travel we still managed to take a strong team of four down with us. Zac Corban, Briony Fraser, Thomas Coombes and Tyrell Priddey represented Hillcrest Swim Club this year – we had a few other qualifiers who were sadly unable to make the trip.

 Over the four days of racing the swimmers brought some awesome intensity to the pool deck. Thomas smashed through his breaststroke races to walk away with some awesome PB’s including a 50m Breast time that qualifies him for NAGs. On the last day Thomas also swum himself to a silver medal in the 200m Breast.

Tyrell had some tough races over the week including 1500m Free and 400m Free. He has now qualified for NAGs in both these events and topped this off with gold in the 1500 & 400 Free and silver in the 200 Free. With his birthday landing on the first day of the meet it seemed only fair that we should make this known to everyone and the team dressed him as a birthday fairy.

 Briony, being the only girl on the team this year, had her work cut out for her. She held her own and showed the boys up with her constant positive attitude around the pool and earning the highest PB rate over the four days. The last day she was a part of the Waikato medley relay team and swum out of her skin with a new 50m Back PB leading out the team to a gold medal winning race!

 Zac battled through some tough fly races over the week swimming against some big 15 year old boys. He won silver in both the 100 & 200 butterfly races. He was also selected for the Waikato freestyle relay where the senior boys had an amazing race just stealing the gold medal from a strong Auckland team. Zac swum the last leg of this relay and brought the team home to victory with 50m free PB for himself.

 The team ended up in 19^th overall but the boys finished 9th, out of a total 53 swimming teams and we had to lug 8 medals on our journey home with us. This is an awesome result considering the size of our team this year! These swimmers are swimming to new heights and I look forward to seeing where they end up in the next few years. NAGs is coming up next on our National calendar later this month in Wellington so stay tuned for more fantastic results from our dedicated athletes.

 Coach Kelsi