Mixed emotions: Local swimmers shine before events cancelled

Four local clubs attended the championships - Tamworth City Swimming Club, Kootingal Moonbi Swimming Club, 360 Scully Park Swimming Club, and Swimming Gunnedah Inc - which took place from Friday to Sunday.

But, after a swimmer vomited during one of the heats on Sunday morning, the rest of the events were scratched.

"Unfortunately they cancelled the carnival Sunday morning," Tamworth City coach Nicolas Monet said.

"I think we could have had other medals, because our interesting races were going to come in the afternoon with the breaststroke."

Scully Park coach, Kate Bolte, echoed Monet's sentiments and said the cancellation was "terrible".

"The cancelled event caused all the swimmers from around the area to miss out on competing," Bolte told the Leader in a text message.

"It was terrible. Some kids from other clubs have driven 3-4 hours and booked accommodation to swim one or two events on Sunday to then have [it] cancelled."

Three of Bolte's five swimmers who attended missed out on events on Sunday, after a promising start with a huge team PB set by the Medley Relay team (who dropped nearly nine seconds off their previous best) made up of Abbey Indiana King, Allison Tooley, Abbey Trewern, and Elouise McCann.

Trewern also set four individual PBs, while Bella Pollard swam a "fast" 200m Butterfly and will compete in the Australian Age Championships in April.

Kootingal Moonbi coach, Graham Johnstone, said his swimmers had "fantastic" results on Friday and Saturday with PBs set by the breaststrokers and freestylers, while the girls' relay beat their entry time with some individual PBs.

"Sunday was going to be our main day ... although the results we did have on Friday arvo and Saturday were very pleasing," Johnstone said.

Swimming Gunnedah was a standout, as its 11 swimmers produced four medals and only had one race without a PB set.

This, coach John Hickey said, was down to the team's work ethic in training.

"They work hard, they were back in the pool this morning. Drove home last night, back in the pool this morning; they're doing the work," Hickey said on Monday.

"The season is relatively short, and if you want to achieve something, you've got to work hard. We'll have a break in May, but up 'til then I expect that if these kids want to achieve something that they get back in the pool each time, and they have been. They've been working really hard."

The list of medal winners is as follows:

Tamworth City Swimming Club

Swimming Gunnedah Inc

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