Albany’s short course medal haul

Albany Swim Club has claimed 10 medals to underline a strong overall performance at the 2017 Swimming WA State Open & Age Short Course Championships at HBF Stadium in Perth last week.

Six competitors from Albany took part in the three-day championships, which began on Friday, and the club returned with three gold medals to go with four silver and three bronze from the 31 events they contested.

Teleya Beattie, Molly Bowles, Gabriela Cannon, Amy Gawned, Tom Gawned and Caitlin Williams were the ASC representatives, with 13-year-old Tom producing another brilliant meet.

He won all three of the club’s gold medals after being crowned State champion in the 200m individual medley, 200m backstroke and 50m freestyle events.

He also won silver medals in the 100m freestyle, 100m backstroke and 100m butterfly, and collected a bronze medal for his effort in the 100m breaststroke while setting five personal best times along the way.

Adding to his large medal haul, Tom also set a new WA all-time and WA Residential State record in the boys’ 13 years 50m freestyle event with his sizzling time of 24.94sec. to eclipse the previous mark of 25.01, set in 2007.

His times in the 200m individual medley, 100m backstroke, 100m butterfly, 200m backstroke and 50m freestyle also set new WA Country Residential and WA Country All Comers records.

Beattie finished the meet with two medals, silver in the 400m freestyle and she won bronze in the 800m freestyle. The other medal came from Cannon, who took home a bronze for her effort in the 400m individual medley event, while she also set three personal best times.

Bowles, Amy Gawned and Williams also finished the meet with multiple personal best times.

ASC had a 61 per cent personal best rate and was the third-placed country club with 106 points, behind Busselton (182 points) and Bunbury (166), which had more swimmers taking part in the competition and entered more events.

ASC head coach Marshall McAleese praised his small squad for their performance.

“Again, we had a fantastic meet, which seems to be a case quite regularly for us,” he said.

“I was delighted with the results as a whole from our squad.”