Swimming Gunnedah claims medals and PBs at Country Champs

It was no different for the members of Swimming Gunnedah, who picked up four medals and a host of personal bests at the Country Championships over the weekend to leave head coach John Hickey "ecstatic".

"You aim for the big events, and all of my kids perform well at big events," Hickey said.

"I think there was only one swim that wasn't a PB, so it's been great."

Jacob Smith took home the most silverware from the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre, with silver medals in the 50m Butterfly and 100m Breaststroke, while Alexis Whitton took home silver in the 50m Freestyle, and Baxter Knapman just edged out Smith to clutch a bronze medal in the 50m Breaststroke.

Over the 2021/22 season, the Gunnedah swimmers have set huge numbers of personal bests at almost every meet they attend.

The key to the club's good form was simple, Hickey said, and it lay in his swimmers' work ethic.

"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," he said.

"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."

Unfortunately, the championships were cut short after somebody vomited in the pool on Sunday, which then had to be closed for cleaning.

They were subsequently called off with just hours to go on Sunday, which left Hickey "disappointed" as some of his students did not get to compete.

"Unfortunately, they never gave us an option to [continue], because that's what we would've done," he said.

"Coming from Gunnedah, we'd already paid our acoommodation and we've already paid for the fuel, so it's not possible for us to come back again.

"I had kids there who never got a swim. Some of the kids in the relay never got a swim, which is really disappointing."

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