17 MEDALS - 100% PROUD

Kangaroo, Crocodile and Buffalo.......and that’s just the dinner menu for us tonight. I’ve almost used up all of the superlatives in my thesaurus to describe our trip so far but I guess I’ll have to keep going because we had another day of days today!!!

Normal routine for the morning and over breakfast coach reads out the news from the day before.

Off to the pool and our media circus continues, after the good luck fairy visits Muriel and scratches her from the 200 fly the boys do their now famous Haka for local radio station Hot 100 FM, Richard says a few words and so does coach then it’s off to work for the last heat session.

It’s a slow start for us with no swimmers until the 5th event of the day. But this gap is filled with talk about the Australian Sport Drug Agency being present on pool side and who would they test?? Eve tried to look inconspicuous by putting on her hoodie hood with EVEL written across the back! There were some very anxious swimmers when they found out that when giving a drugs test sample you’re not even allowed to turn your back while you pee!!! This coming from a group in which peeing in a sink is quite OK!!

One of the aspects of this meet that some of our swimmers have never experienced before is a third day and some struggled with what we in the coaching fraternity commonly refer to as Day 3 blues.

Sam love picked up a massive PB in his 200IM heat as did Kristie Price (keep an eye out for these two later on in the day).

Emma Bailey swum a bold and brave 100 fly and for 75m it looked like she was going to get the big pay off that such risk taking can deliver but then out of nowhere a fridge dropped out of the sky and made the last 25M seem like forever.

It may not have paid off in this event but that risk taking attitude would pay off later when Emma did a PB of over 8 seconds in the 50 backstroke.

All the 13 & 14 year boys did great 100 fly swims with BBB, Ben-10 and Josh freeman swimming pb’s in every single race of the meet.

Claudia and Jessica swum the 100m brs heats with Jess swimming an 8 second PB. When Claudia scratched from the final Jess went in and knocked off another 4 seconds in the afternoon.

Kristie qualified for NAGS in the 50 brs and for the final as well and Sam qualified 7th and Autahi 8th for the 50free final.

Both our relay teams qualified for the finals and Autahi finished off our morning with a 3 second Pb in the 100 backstroke.

We returned to free spirit for lunch and a well deserved afternoon nap. Yet to be finalists and coach returned to the pool for a quick meeting before their final afternoon dip. We discussed the concept that being in a final is not the only measure of success which
matters, I was very pleased with the response from this group and the importance of following process was brought home when Jessica found out ½ way through her loosen that she would in fact be a finalist in the 100 Br.

That brought our total number of Finals swimmers to 11 (the most yet) in the last session.

When the finalist arrived they refocused well and their warm up was punctuated by some very good work on starts.

Just like the morning we had quite a big gap before our first final swim so all of the finalists warmed up again in the little pool. The managers have done a great job of supervising this pool over the meet which means our swimmers don’t have to worry about their gear going missing and there is always a friendly face at the pool side.

Cameron kicked off the afternoon with a last stroke bronze medal in the 100 fly. The next race was Jessica’s first final for the week and she bumped her 100 brs down by another 3 seconds making a total of 13 seconds for the day.

Kurt then scored his second silver medal with a very technical 100 brs. Alex was storming home for a narrow 5th place.

12 & under 50 free Sam Love lane 1 Autahi in lane 8. Sam scores our second silver from an outside lane with an outstanding 29.7 and Autahi takes another pb.

Then it’s time for another first time medallist as Muriel takes a bronze in the 50 fly.

Yet another first time medallist as Kristie price takes bronze in the 50 breaststroke improving over 2 seconds through the day.

Just as Jessica sits and relaxes on the pool side she gets the call that another in the 100 backstroke has not showed so she literally runs to marshalling via the change rooms and swims 5 seconds faster than her morning swim.

Our last medal comes in the form of a silver from Autahi in the 100 backstroke his time of 1:12 is 5 seconds better than where he started the day.

Claudia and Muriel swum in the Ararfura invitational 100 freestyle where they finished 4th and 6th and that was the end of our swimming....well almost.

Now the bank is a hive of swapping and Eve discovers that having EVEL on the back of your shirt makes it hard to swap! Cameron was fortunate that one of the New Caledonia boys had a girlfriend named Camille so his “CAM” top was just right.

It was neat to see our swimmers interacting with others from around the pacific and Australia as they wheeled and dealed.

Our last swim was our victory lap. All the swimmers started together, swum the 50 and gave themselves 3 cheers for a great meet. Coach shook hands with all of the swimmers as they left the pool.

When we got back to Free Spirit a couple from Wanganui were the live entertainment and we heard 10 Guitars before they finished. The swimmers then tucked into their Aussie roadkill spectacular with the Crocodile being the most popular, the Kangaroo not so much and Pavalova with Apple pie for desert.

... and to pay for our dinner the boys did a Haka for the Resort Staff and the girls sung the Maori verses of the National Anthem.

All week the swimmers have been tempted by the resort pool and after getting the plan for tomorrow they let loose for ½ hour before a touchy resort manager came and asked us to quiet down.

And so the last of our competition days comes to a close. All week at the pool I have been so proud of your children they have been a credit to themselves, their club and their families.
Final medal count

2 Gold-Cameron (2) 7 Silver-Kurt (2), Caludia (2),Sam, Autahi, Cameron, 8 Bronze- Claudia (3), Kristie, Cameron, Muriel, Kurt, Autahi,

Total 17!!! 11:30 time to go

Tomorrow we are tourists.
Andrew (Coach of Leisure)

Kiwi All-Stars - Northern Territory News

Northern Territory News
GETTING AMPED UP: Autahi Brock leads the Kiwi West swimming team in performing the Haka at yesterday’s swim meet.
Picture: Brad Fleet

CROC STALKS NUDE BEACH...

That was the headline in today’s paper. The boys were keen to go and see..... the croc of course.

We had our standard racing day wake up and breakfast to drive away from Free Spirit by 6:30am, oh! and by the way you hometown breakfast preparer’s the whole team is now very used to bacon, eggs and hash browns so there may need to be some attitude adjustments when your swimmers/spouses return!!!

Today we faced a big challenge, how do we maintain the energy and intensity that we brought to the first day? simple (with apologies to Nike) - Just do it.

• Kurt kicked off the morning session with a great 200 brs into the final, Josh Freeman chimed in with a 3 second pb in 200 brs so the scene was set.
  
  
• Great 100 Free from Sam, Autahi, Emma, Richard, Ben 10 and Big Bad Ben (BBB) along with Swampy (Marshall) set up the day with some very committed racing.
  
  
• Claudia, Muriel, Alex and James all qualified for 200IM finals with James knocking out a 13 second PB.
  
  
• 50 Fly saw Evel pb and Kristie make the final. Sam Loves 50 fly was a 5 second pb.
  
  
• Claudia, Kurt, Alex and James all qualified for the 50 brs finals.
  
  
• More 50 fly action followed with Richard, BBB, Josh, Cameron, and Ben-10 all with Pb’s and Cameron into the final.
  
  
• Claudia and Muriel qualified for the 50 free final and Alex broke into the 27’s in his. 100 Backstroke
  
  
• Richard, BBB, Ben 10 and Cameron with pb’s and Cameron despite watching tennis for the whole race into the final. Autahi and Sam did Pb’s in the 100 brs (Sam’s knocked off over 20 seconds!).
  
  
• Finally around 12:00 noon BBB did a Pb of 8 seconds in the 400 free and Marshall dropped 5 seconds on his (He split the first 100 really well but then went to sleep so I ran around the end of the pool to remind him that it was actually a RACE he got the idea and recovered well)
  
  
• We changed our plan from day 1 today and had Roger bring Lunch from the resort and we ate and rested at the pool.
  
  
• James won the poker tourney, Cameron lost to Coach at Paper Scissors rock and Coach lost to Ben-10.
  
  
• While we were resting a journalist from the Territorian showed up because he had heard about our Haka the day before and wanted a story. He spent ½ hour talking to Autahi who made him really work for any information with a huge range of answers from “yes” to “no”. Anyway the upshot was they wanted to come back and get a photo of the boys in full flight so stay tuned.
  
  
• At 3:30 our yet to be finalists met with the coach to review the mornings work and reinforce the hydration and self care responsibilities for the afternoon. Kate Ryan caught a lizard with her bare hands!! This group then moved into the warm up to complete their afternoon swim.
  
  
• The finalists meeting focused more on the process of racing. If you get the process right then the outcome is inevitable. It was very hot on the pool deck today and (brace yourself) coach was actually seen downing 2 (that’s right 2) bottles of water!!!!
  
  
• So we settled in for the finals...the boys did another great Haka but the photographer missed the shot!!! ... the boys had to do a set up one for the journo, we await tomorrows paper with anticipation.
  
  
• Thats when the the fun really began and the power fails. Chaos! ...and a 20 minute delay they restart the meet and we race through the first few races because they have no electronics to declare results and no loud speaker to announce medals etc...
  
  
• By the time the power comes back on Kristie is poised behind the block for her 50 fly final but they stop the meet again! ...she waits 35 minutes for her race!!! Cool calm and collected she narrowly misses a medal from lane 1 but with a great time of 33 and some change. An outstanding swim form Kristie!
  
  
• Autahi swims a 1:05.14 for his 100 free, 5th in his final.
  
  
• Claudia carries on where she left off last night and scores a closely fought silver medal in the 200IM and a 6 second pb for the day missing gold by only 0:0.12 of a second.
  
  
• Kurt is number one qualifier in the 50 breast final and gives it his all to score a bronze to go with his silver from yesterday.
  
  
• Claudia scores another medal in the 50 Free this time a bronze and her time of 29.00 is oh so close to the 28’s!!
  
  
• Cameron gets another turn on the dais with his 1:07 silver medal in the 100 backstroke.

Other goings on today
Josh Freeman considers transfer to North Shore... KWA girls appalled by his new fans declare Josh persona non gratia (Shakepeare put it best “methinks she doth protest too much!!”)

KWA gear in high demand as more groups come to visit our spot during the day. Tim gets driving hints from 10 backseat drivers on the way back from the pool

Last but not least Richard (experienced presenter) and Coach (go-fer) get invited to live radio broadcast from pool tomorrow morning.

Medals today

• 2 Silver, 2bronze

Overall

• 2 Gold, 4 silver, 5 Bronze

Tomorrow we race and chase more gold!!!!!!
Andrew (Live from the news desk)

KA MATE! KA MATE!

• 06:00 - Bbreakfast roll call and all are present and accounted for
• 06:15 - Advance scouting group head to pool to secure seat
• 06:30 - Main team leaves free spirit
• 07:00 - KWA Join 297 swimmers in 6 lanes (+2 for AWD)
• 08:15 - Racing starts promptly at 8:00

...and then the cascade begins wave after wave of PB’s from our team, Boys, Girls, IM, Free, Back Breast and Fly it didn’t matter we were quite simply on fire. Average PB in boys 200IM - 8 SECONDS!!!

It was a great morning you can check out the actual results on the Arafura website as I don’t have them at the moment.

A special shout out to our 12 year olds Eve, Kristie, Kate, Sam and Autahi who all swum with great determination and application.

The meet runs about 2 hours over in the morning so we have staggered groups heading back to the Freespirit. I join the last group and after a 20 minute turn around head back to the pool with our swimmers who would not be swimming in finals (yet). We had a meeting at the pool with some lizards under a tree and then they moved off to complete their afternoon loosen up.

The finalists arrived not long after and we reviewed their plans for the afternoon. The pool is cleared, the officials are on deck, and standing proudly on the end of the Causarina Pool are the KWA boys stripped to the waist. They wait as the crowd quiets and all around the pool people are rushing for their cameras, they know what’s about to come.

Autahi’s voice sounds out clear and strong - A warriors call, THE HAKA! and the Kiwi boys respond with a resounding unified voice and the challenge is issued. The crowd cheers and respond with a feeble ”aussie aussie aussie oi oi oi“ but the moment belongs to the KWA boys.

The meet is a true international event with flags being hoisted for the medal winners and National anthem’s of the champion. With monotonous regularity “Advance Australia Fair” rings out until Cameron Blair steps up in the 200IM for 13 & 14 year old boys.

Still only 13 years old he is top qualifier by over 10 seconds going into the final but coach has warned him to expect some fireworks from the New Caledonia swimmer Damon Theveny in lane 5 and sure enough Cameron is ½ a body length down at the touch after the fly but a superb underwater backstroke breakout puts him ½ body length in front after flags.

Cameron has a great backstroke length and leads by a body length going into the breaststroke leg which was his weakest in the morning.

In the early part of this 50 the Theveny is gaining but Cameron pulls away again in the last 15 meters to lead by 2 body lengths going into the last turn from where he is too strong for both Theveny and Davison from North Shore Swimming.

BLAIR WINS!. He breaks the Manawatu Age Group record, the Northern Territory All Comers Record for 13 year olds and takes 3 seconds of his PB. NZ first, New Caledonia 2nd and NZ third and not an Aussie on the dais.

The very next race saw Muriel and Claudia step up in the Final of the Hundred Freestyle, both had swum PB’s in the heats an after a blistering start Claudia came away with a Silver medal and Muriel came in 6th.

Alex stepped up in the final of the 100 Freestyle after breaking the minute in for the first time in the morning he backed up well moving from 8th to 6th and shaving another ½ second off his time.

Sam and Autahi were both in the final of the 50 back and Autahi had a blinding swim to take a bronze medal from lane 6, Sam was 6th.

In a once every three years event Claudia stepped up in the 50 backstroke and picked up another medal this time a bronze. More importantly she set a faster time than brother Alex had done in his heat so the pressure was on.

The 15&16 year boys 50 back had three Kiwi swimmers James in 6 Alex in 7 and Kurt in 8 and after a stunning start the planets lined up and Kurt walked away with a Silver medal from lane 8!!!! With A 3 second PB, James got 5th only splits off his best and Alex snuck in 0:00.12 (or so) ahead of sister Claudia

Cameron was in the 50 free final and he broke into the 27‘s for the first time finishing 5th.

Kristy Price had a gutsy swim in the 100 fly final after an 8 second pb in the morning and finished 5th.


Claudia and Muriel stepped up again in the 100 fly and Claudia scored a third medal for the day this time a bronze with Muriel a gallant 6th

Ending the finals as he began them Cameron won the 100 breaststroke gold medal with an outstanding 5 second PB on where he started the day.

7 MEDALS, 2 Golds, 2 Silver and 3 Bronze medals on the first day.!

On the way back to the accommodation Muriel was remarking on the pretty sunset, only to discover that she was in fact looking at the moon on the rise!!! Nice

The links between North Shore and KWA grow stronger by the day with the boys Haka and Josh Freemans boyish good looks well enough said ......


Team Meeting at 8:30pm, lights out at 9:00pm. Managers meeting at 9:00, newsletter until 10:00 so I’m beat..

Tomorrow we race....BETTER!!!!

Andrew (International coach of mystery)

Walking the red carpet...

Well what a day-Man eating Water bugs, A round the world photo shoot, a good luck dragon attack and a fireworks spectacular to finish off.

Today we mirrored the start of our first race day by having a 6am breakfast and then off to the pool for a swim.

The insect life of Darwin seemed to be quite at home in the early morning session - from a coaching point it was great, as soon as the swimmers would stop at the end of the pool they would be set upon by water bugs about 1cm long that would give them a friendly nip and remind them that they should probably be off swimming again now!!

Many of our team found this most disconcerting and the screams/squeals and general splashing to avoid the watery demons was quite funny to watch. The range of responses was from Kurt "Bug Tamer" Gannon who was playing happily with his new friends like some sort of insect
world Lion man to Jessica "The terminator" Love who made it her mission to get as many of the bugs out of the pool as she could.

There was also quite a strong showing from the squeal and complain crowd whose names are too numerous to list but ably lead by Emma "get it off me!" Bailey. Even the Northern Territory team was squealing away, I thought they would be used to it.

Sara-Jane and I stayed at the pool for the team mangers meeting and pool orientation tour while the rest of the team hit the supermarket for snacks for tomorrow's competition.

Before lunch the boys had Haka practise by the pool which drew quite a crowd but by the 4th time through I think the crowd got bored.

Lunch by the pool was followed by a team meeting to go over the afternoons plan. It's a shame I didn't draw the plan in simple crayon pictures because for the first time on this trip we were late leaving for the pool!!!!

I hate to be late! Our afternoon workout was short only 45 mins and we shared the pool with the Australian Paralympic team again. Jess must have killed all the bugs in the morning because by the time the afternoon workout came around there were none.

We left the pool at 3;45 and made our way to the centre of the Arafura Games at the Marrara sports hub. We were given a meal and from around 4:30 the holding pen of nations behind the main stadium started to grow.

We were surrounded by (and this is not a full list) Iran, Iraq, Great Britian, Northern Ireland , Brunei, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Macau, Indonesia, Malaysia all the Australian States and we met up with the North Shore Swimmers, some Muay Thai kick boxers from NZ as well as the NZ Paralympic athletes we met on our first day.

Claudia and Roberta were a big hit with the boys from other teams almost queuing up to take a photo with them. (could be a possible fundraiser next time?)

Emma and Eve started on a collection of photo's with as many countires as they could while Marshall made firends with (of course ) the team from the Marsahll Islands.

Cameron and Josh got to know the girls from North Shore a little better while the pink glasses brigade of Alex, James and Josh were also in demand for the photo takers.

Coach Andrew busted his French out on the New Caledonia equivalent of Weird Al Yankovich who obviously thought I could actually speak French and launched into what I am pretty sure was an earnest attempt to ask me out either that or he was giving me a recipe for quiche.

A parachute dropping from the sky kicked off the parade of Nations and I ‘m sure that the buzz from walking into the stadium will last us all for years to come. Our team were High five-ing the crowd as we marched around the edge of the oval and settled in to watch the show.

That’s when the good luck dragon allegedly attacked Claudia!!

Fireworks, music and dance filled the stadium and as we walked out at 9pm the team was buzzing.

Nothing to cringe about today folks all the team are well and sleeping soundly for our debut at the pool tomorrow.

Tommorow WE RACE!!

Andrew (French correspondent coach)

Snakes on a plane? ... no, on your child!

Day 2:

... started at a much more gentlemanly hour with an 8 oclock breakfast (bacon eggs hash browns cereal toast and about 40 ltres of juice!!!!). A few words with the chefs should put us less in a sinking boat and more in a racing boat mode!

The boys soundly beat the girls on the room inspection tour, well at least that’s what they told me!

And although it didn’t come out till later in the day (so to speak) it would seem that the “Parental Cringe Awards” have a new leader overnight. First some background, our accommodation is cabin style with shared bathroom facilities and to be fair the bathrooms are a long way from the rooms. And also to be fair we did insist that the team drink lots and lots (and lots!) of water. And in the interests of further fairness it is hard to climb down from a top bunk in pitch black. And continuing in our fairness crusade at least our hero didn’t let go on the floor, in bed or on his roommates. And in the final salute to fairness everything that goes down the sink goes into the sewer anyway.........and the name of our hero? (Every boys mum silently praying “ please no please no please no” ) The Midnight Sink Pee’er of Darwin is........ CENSORED

Anyway off to the middle of the Darwin CBD for a tour of the Crocasaurus Cove. This is like an aquarium/croc zoo/reptile house type of place. Crocodiles, snakes lizards turtles and all manner of Australian nasties were there. As you can see from the photo’s there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth but all the swimmers had a go. Even some of the managers got to hold onto an Aussie snake (???).

After Crocosaurus cove we had a picnic lunch. We visited the Dawrin entertainment Centre to get our accreditation badges and all the team were also given a free backpack. The team then let loose on the shop keepers of Darwin and brothers and sisters (and a surprising number of girlfriends, boyfriends and “just friends”) will be pleased to know that many gifts were purchased. Bargain of the day to Richard Rumbal for his $20.00 Ford racing team shirt (marked down from $55 Janice!!!).

All the team made it back to the meeting spot early so the shops must have been done !!We made our way back to the pool where the swimmers had an hour rest time in the shade meanwhile Roger went to a general Managers meeting. While we were resting the Australian Paralympic Development Team were going through their paces.

Our afternoon workout was punctuated by the arrival of Team PNG, around 40 strong they piled into the lane next door to us and their presence did not go unnoticed, especially “that really cute one” !! (Nup, sorry parents not telling).

Our workout was a lot more focussed tonight and as the 120 strong Northern Territory team filled the 2 lanes on the other side of ours the international flavour of the event started to hit home. I could tell by the glint in the eye of the other teams that our gear will be sought after!

After a great dinner we had a team meeting outlining the plan for tomorrow, then we had a managers meeting and now at 10.30 I’m just about ready to hit the hay.

Tomorrow THE OPENING CEREMONY, 14000 SPECTATORS, 25 COUNTRIES WITH 2500 ATHLETES AND US!!

Andrew (Crocodile Coach Dundee)