THE Hamilton and Alexandra College is celebrating another proud sporting achievement by one of its students after Chloe Adams qualified for the 2023 Australian Age Swimming Championships last weekend.

The 13-year-old set her sights on qualifying for the championships about 12 months ago when she started competitive swimming for the Warrnambool Swimming Club in the 50m backstroke event.

“I’ve been swimming since I was really young, but living in Port Fairy I couldn’t swim competitively as there wasn’t a club in Port Fairy and I’ve only been swimming competitively at the club level for about a year,” Adams said.

“I was able to better the qualifying time (for her age group) of 33.74 at the Ballarat Aquatic Centre meet held on Sunday, as I set my personal best of 33.45.”

“My initial time for the 50m backstroke was 42 seconds when I first competed at the distance, and it’s down to 33 now.”

“I want to continue to lower my PB so that I get into the higher ranked heats for the championships next year,” Adams said.

The Gold Coast will host the Championships in April 2023 at the Gold Coast Aquatic Centre, and the Year 8 is very excited about getting to compete in such a venue.

“This is my first national title event and I’m really looking forward to it,” Adams said.

Like all competitive swimmers, Adams needs complete dedication to her chosen sport to succeed, and that means training four or five times a week at a time when most people are sound asleep.

“I get up at 5am every training morning and swimming starts at 6am, but I cannot do the whole session, which lasts two hours each morning as I must catch a bus to come to school, so I’m out of the pool by 7.10am,” she said.

“I haven’t been able to attend training in the afternoon so far, as the sessions finish at 5.30pm and I don’t get home from school in time for them.”

“There is a session being started now that will go from 6pm to 8pm that I take part in, so my training schedule will increase from this week”

When you consider Adams has achieved the set qualifying time by training only 4-5 hours per week, it’s an incredible achievement, especially as she has only swum competitively for 12 months.

“I going to school at Ballarat Grammar next year, so I’ll be able to train/swim much more than I am now,”

Adams has a very level head when it comes to her aspirations with her swimming too.

“I don’t want to set goals too big then get let down if I don’t make it, but my goal really was to try and qualify for nationals, so now my goal is to try and qualify for more events at nationals.”

Originally Chloe was coached by Josh Sobey, but she has now advanced into the highest squad at the Warrnambool Swimming Club under Jason Lamb

“It was very much some hard work from Josh that saw me qualify for nationals, but Jason did a lot too in getting me to where I am now,” she said.

“Backstroke is my favourite stroke and I made school state titles when I was in Grade 5 as a backstroker with absolutely no training whatsoever for it,” Adams said.

The championships are scheduled for April 7-15, 2023.