North West Swimming boasts a highly successful 2018/19 season with 17 swimmers qualifying for the SA National Aquatic Championships at Kings Park Aquatic Centre in Durban from 7 to 12 April 2019.
This prestigious event is a yearly open competition that incorporates the following aquatic disciplines under the auspices of Swimming South Africa: swimming, diving and synchronised swimming. This year’s championships provided the basis for selection for a team to represent South Africa at the 18th FINA World Championships in Gwangju, South Korea.
The swimming discipline entails three categories, namely the SA Youth, SA Elite Youth and the SA Senior Nationals. They all run concurrently as combined events, with finals in the latter category only. Swimmers between 13 and 23 years old (previously 13–19 years) enter under the Youth category. If these swimmers qualify for the Senior Championships, they are considered as Elite Youth.
The Paralympic events are swum in two categories, depending on the swimmer’s disability classification. The final results and qualification for the final events for the latter group are determined by the world records for each classification.
In the Youth category, the following provincial swimmers made it to the podium: Nadia Blaauw (bronze, 200 m backstroke), Marné Meier (bronze, 100 m breaststroke) and Courtney van Biljon (gold, 50 m butterfly). Malcolm Botha (both the 50 m and 100 m breaststroke events), Marné Meier (100 m breast) and Courtney van Biljon (50 m butterfly) broke NW age group records. In the Elite Youth category, Pieter Coetzee collected gold in the 100 m backstroke and bronze in the 200 m backstroke events. In the category for swimmers with multi-class disabilities, Cornelle Leach zipped to victory in the 50 m breaststroke and both the 100 m and 50 m freestyle events, posting qualifying times for the IPC World Championships (London, 9–15 September 2019).
The Elite Youth swimmers, Van Zyl Brand and Bianca Opperman had stellar performances. They both swam finals in the Senior competition.
Van Zyl made finals in all three backstroke events and improved his own NW Open record in the 200 m backstroke event. Bianca made finals in the 50 m breaststroke and the 50 m and 100 m butterfly events and broke the NW age group records in the 100 m freestyle and the 50 m, 100 m and 200 m breaststroke events.
The undisputed star swimmer of the team was Pieter Coetzee, who topped it all by breaking NW national and domestic age group records in the 200 m backstroke and both the 50 m and 100 m butterfly events and SA age group records in both the 50 m and 100 m backstroke events. He also qualified for the seventh Fina Junior World Championships (20–25 August, Budapest) in the latter event.
