Nunawading was crowned Champion Club at the Optus 2019 Victorian Age Championships on Tuesday night, with a combined score of 3122 points. But just moments after celebrating the success with his team, head coach Dean Bryant declared he wanted significant improvement next year.
"Nunawading's only running at 50 to 60 percent of what we could be,” he said. "“… Our goals at state and national and international levels are very, very high reaching, so for us, we feel like we’re only scratching the surface of what we can achieve.”
Rounding out the top three clubs at the championships were MLC Aquatic (2182 points) and Northcote (1324 points). Nunawading swimmers also claimed three Age group champion awards: Evan Chee (Boys, 12 year olds), Will Sharp (Boys, 16 year olds), and Kayla Costa (Girls, 17-18 year olds).
However, Bryant said: “it was a good meet without being a great meet”.
“We were very, very strong in a couple of age groups but we’ve definitely got some work to do in some others to make sure that next year we are covering the spread of events,” he said.
“One of our goals is always to be very strong in relays across all of the age groups, win medals across all of the age groups and also to have athletes in every age group in every final.
“So for us there were some outstanding results but definitely some things we’ve got to work on for next year.”
There was also a wide spread of Age Group Champions. Of the 12 categories, the swimmers came from nine clubs: The champions were:
12 year olds: Giselle Davey (Girls, St Leonards), Joshua Wilkinson (Boys, Melbourne H2O)
13 year olds: Sienna Shepherd (Girls, Bayside), Evan Chee (Boys, Nunawading)
14 year olds: Maggie Skewes (Girls, Wangaratta), Jordyn Cargill (Traralgon)
15 year olds: Oliva Lefoe (Girls, MLC), Noah Millard (Boys, MLC)
16 year olds: Abbey Kearney (Girls, Cheltenham), Will Sharp (Boys, Nunawading)
17/18 year olds: Kayla Costa (Girls, Nunawading), Silas Harris (Northcote)
Melbourne Vicentre won the Itoman Friendship Cup for the Victorian club that scored the most points in races against Japanese club’s swimmers. For these championships, that was the 12-year-old boys and girls. Nunawading had the second most points, followed by MLC.
Final points standings for: combined, boys and girls, can be found here.
