ELLA Matters has returned from one of her biggest achievements to date, swimming in the Australian Age Championships in the Gold Coast last week.

Heading into the week the 13-year-old was ranked 30th in her priority event, the 50m breaststroke, where she managed to beat her personal best and improve her ranking to 22nd spot.

To qualify for the championships is no mean feat with Matters required to record a specific time to be invited. She managed to tick off the required time which meant she could come up against some of the best in the nation in her age group.

While it was a big stage Matters said the venue didn’t intimidate her and she has been working on controlling her nerves ahead of races.

“It wasn’t as big as I thought it was going to be, I thought there’d be more seats and more people but the grandstands weren’t full so it wasn’t as nerve wracking as I thought it was going to be heading into the venue,” she said.

“But still I was so nervous ahead of the race, you warm up about an hour before and because I normally get really nervous, I try to focus on my target times during warm up and not on the race because otherwise I get really worried about the race and not about my preparation.

“I just try focusing on times and technique in warm up – once I’ve done warm up I put music on and chill until marshalling and then once it gets to marshalling I start thinking about what it is I need to do. Then when I get called up to the blocks I take three deep breaths and get into it.

“I false started at countries last year… never again. That’s one of the biggest things I think about when I get up there because if you false start you don’t even get to race.”

Finishing with the 22nd fastest time across her age group in the 50m breaststroke, Matters was a fraction of a second away from making the final which will be her next goal moving forward.

“I was .15 off making the final, I was happy with my race and all of that but when I found out I was so close to make the final that really annoyed me – being in a national final is one of my big dreams so that was tough.

“I was second emergency so I still had to go there and warm up in case anyone pulled out… but that didn’t happen.

“I’m going to work harder this training so I can get that final next time.”

Matters also competed in the 100m breaststroke and once again defied her own expectations,

“I went a lot better than I thought I would. At states I added two seconds in the 100m and at school swimming I added another two, I’d been adding a lot in my 100m so I thought going into this big meet I’m not sure how I’ll go; but, I ended up taking 2.01 seconds off and dropped about 30 places nationally so that was pretty cool,” she said.

Matters said it is exciting to come up against the top talent in Australia but also makes for a challenging task moving forward.

“I know a lot of the people I’m coming up against now so I see the names on their caps swimming beside me and a lot of the time I’m just thinking this person is going to be at the Olympics in ten years,” she said.

“I just want to keep focused on my swimming though and one of my goals is to make two finals at states, qualify for 200m individual medley at states and either a final at nationals or win a medal at countries.”