13 year old Grace Khelan has achieved a first for schools swimming after her Bronze finish in the 50 meter fly at the School Sport Australia Swimming Championships.
Khelan is part of a 62 member Fiji Schools Swimming contingent taking part in the five-day long event at the state-of-the-art Sleelam Sports Complex in Chandler, Brisbane.
Khelan competed against other top 13 year old swimmers from New South Wales, ACT, Western Australia, Northern Territory, Victoria and Queensland.
Proud mother Sereana Heritage attributes her daughters strong performance to her consistent training regime with Suva based club Orca steered by club head coach Esther Malani.
Meanwhile the Fiji schools team is being led by Lautoka based head coach Salaseini Lele who says this year the squad is bigger compared to last year.
“After a strong outing for Fiji Swimming at the recent mini games in Palau, this event will be a great exposure for our young swimmers as we also build up towards the Pacific Games in 2027,” she said.
With the trip fully self-funded by each swimmer, Ms Lele adds this championships also allows our young swimmers to benchmark themselves against arguably the best swimmers from across Australia.
“By competing against Australia’s best school age swimmers, this will also push our young swimmers to perform beyond their normal best and hopefully achieve some good times in the pool,” says Ms Lele.
The team is made up of 42 male and 20 female student swimmers from both primary and secondary school who qualified from the Fiji Schools Swimming championships held from May 30th and 31st with ages ranging from 13 years to 18 years.
