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Covering the Goulburn and Murray valleys
JANUARY 28, 2013 4:05am

Swift strikes gold at Country Championships

Shepparton Swimming Club’s Brennan Swift performed ‘‘out of his skin’’ to pick up a gold medal at the Victorian Country Championships held at Sale during the weekend.

By Hannah Driscoll

Shepparton Swimming Club’s Brennan Swift performed ‘‘out of his skin’’ to pick up a gold medal at the Victorian Country Championships held at Sale during the weekend.

Swift won gold in the 14-to-15-year-old 100m butterfly to cap the results for the club.

Shepparton co-coach Michelle Swift said Brennan was happy with the result.

‘‘He was a bit nervous because he had been ranked in the top two going in, so he wasn’t too sure how he would go,’’ she said.

‘‘He performed out of his skin and was really happy with the final result.’’

Shepparton finished with 26 top eight finalists for individual events and relays, including six fifths, four sixths, three sevenths and two eighths from the individual events.

Tom Houston won silver in the open 100m breaststroke and bronze in the 50m breaststroke and also finished fourth in the 200m breaststroke.

Ashleigh Dunning made the most finals from the club’s representatives with five, while Brennan Swift made four finals including the open 100m butterfly with 22-year-old Shepparton teammate Jake MacKenna.

It turned into a successful weekend for the Dunning and Swift families, as Ashleigh’s younger brother Daniel Dunning made two finals and Brennan’s older brother Kalen made one final.

Houston and MacKenna both made three finals.

Twelve-year-old Hume Hurley also celebrated making his first final at the Country Championships in the 100m backstroke.

Traralgon Swimming Club won the championships for the 13th time in 14 years with 2918 points ahead of Geelong (1626) and Warrnambool (1120).

Michelle Swift said Shepparton began day three yesterday in the top 10 ranked clubs and hoped it would hold its place by the end of the day.

‘‘We’re really happy because at the moment the club’s low on our older age groups, so we don’t tend to get as many points for the club in that 17-and-over age group because we don’t have those swimmers,’’ she said.

‘‘We tend to miss out on that higher end swimmers, but we had a lot of swimmers in the younger age groups who outperformed expectations and contributed to our points and we did end up with some really good results.

‘‘We had some outstanding results from our younger club members competing in relays, because this year a lot of them were competing in their first country event, let alone relay.

‘‘We were really proud of how they performed and how they worked as squad members and as a team.’’

The 2014 Victorian Country Championships will be held at Wodonga.

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