Swim Rotorua at NZ Juniors

Rotorua swimmer Bianca Donelley is one to watch out for in the future, after winning three national titles in the pool.

Swim Rotorua enjoyed a successful Junior National Championships last week at the Wellington Regional Swimming Centre.

Despite taking only a small team of three girls, all raced their hearts out and produced plenty of best times.

Bianca, a national junior champion in 2013 and 2014, maintained her brilliant form to dominate the freestyle events in the girls' 12-years age group. She produced a tactical masterclass to take three gold medals in the 50m, 100m and 200m freestyle events.

Despite a tough field, she showed what a prospect she is by finishing her races with speed to overhaul the early pace-setters.

Her winning times of 28.63 seconds (a Bay of Plenty record), 1min 2.42sec and 2min 14.26sec were all best times for the young swimmer by a huge margin.

Bianca also picked up a silver medal in the 400m freestyle, with a great time of 4min 43.68sec, after a titanic battle with Paris Culter from the Ice Breaker Swim Club.

Not content with that, Bianca showed her growing versatility in making the top 10 in her other events including the 50m, 100m and 200m backstroke, and 200m and 400m individual medley.

Milla Theobald also produced some cracking results from her heavy programme of 11 events.

Her best performance came in the girls' 11-years 200m freestyle in which she finished 10th, achieved in a great time of 2min 30.75sec.

That was 16 seconds faster than her time set last year, highlighting Milla's rapid rise through the national rankings.

Also competing in the 11-year age group was Emily Spear.

She achieved four best times from her five events.

Emily produced two 11th places in the 200m freestyle and individual medley with improved times.

She also smashed her 400m freestyle time to go to 5min 13.70sec.

The girls have all done extremely well. Bianca obviously captures the headlines with her record-breaking and powerful performances, particularly in the freestyle events, but I am especially pleased with the girls' growing maturity as athletes.

They all gave it everything and kept on learning from each race, which is critical if you wish to compete at the highest levels.

Overall, we placed 22nd as a club which was a good improvement on our 27th place from last year.

-Alastair Johnson is the head coach at Swim Rotorua

- Rotorua Daily Post