North West Swimming boasts a highly successful 2016/17 season with 11 swimmers qualifying for the SA National Aquatic Championships that took place at Kingspark Aquatic Centre in Durban from 3 – 8 April.
This prestigious event is a yearly open competition event which incorporates swimming, diving and synchronised swimming under the auspices of Swimming South Africa.
The swimming disciplines entail three categories, namely the SA Youth, SA Elite Youth and the SA Senior Nationals, all running concurrently as combined events, with semi-finals and finals in the latter category only.
Swimmers between 13 and 19 years old enter under the Youth category but are ‘upgraded’ to the Elite Youth category once they swim a senior qualifying time in the championships.
The Paralympic events are swum in two categories, depending on the swimmer’s disability classification. The results and qualification for the final events for the latter group are determined using the world records for each classification.
In the Youth category, the following provincial swimmers made it to the podium and qualified for the semi-finals in the senior category: Nadia Blaauw (silver, 200 m backstroke), Van Zyl Brand (gold, 200 m backstroke; bronze, 100 m backstroke), and Franco van Niekerk (gold, 200 m butterfly). Willie Scheepers, competing in his 14th consecutive National Championships since 2003, made finals in the 50 m butterfly event in the senior category.
In the category for swimmers with multi-class disabilities, Cornell Loubser zipped victory in the 50 m and 100 m butterfly, 50 m backstroke and 200 m individual medley events and posted qualifying times for the Deaflympics (previously called World Games for the Deaf) in three events (50 m, 100 m and 200 m butterfly respectively). She also made the semi-final of the 200 m butterfly in the senior category. Michelle Bloem clinched silver in both the 50 m and 100 m backstroke events.
These swimmers, co-incidentally all affiliated to the North-West University swimming club, were thus responsible for the total medal count for the province!
This year’s championships provided the basis for selection for teams to represent South Africa at the 17th FINA World Championships in Hungary. Eight swimmers managed to swim qualifying times to book spots in the SA swimming team.
They are Myles Brown, Douglas Erasmus, Chad le Clos, Tatjana Schoenmaker, Brent Szurdoki, Brad Tandy, Cameron van der Burgh and Zane Waddell.
There were 24 swimmers who swam qualifying times for the 6th Junior World Championships (23 – 28 August, Indianapolis); four qualified for the Deaf Olympics (18 – 30 July 2017, Turkey) and seven paralympic swimmers qualified for the IPC World Championships (London, 14 – 23 July 2017).
