SHE'S winning gold medals, she's clocking records and lowering her personal best marks, but Sienna Whalan still has more she wants to achieve in the pool.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Bathurst Swim Club talent is hoping she can get on the dais at the NSW Senior State Age Championships in December and clock a time which would see her qualify for nationals.
While Whalan is strong across all strokes, it is breaststroke in which she has really excelled, specifically over 50 metres.
"At the beginning of the year I would have been doing a 39 and now I'm down to a 36.1," Whalan said.
"She's probably one of the fastest 50 breastrokers going around the Mountains and Plains region and she's still chipping away at it. She's actually within one and a half seconds now of the national open time, the elite time, which is pretty massive," Bathurst Swim Club head coach Josh Stapley added.
Like many sporting talents across the region, Whalan has had to deal with a year impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
But while the Manning Aquatic Centre was closed the under 13s swimmer worked hard on the strength and conditioning part of her training.
After squad training resumed in late June, Whalan continued to work hard. It was something Stapley took note of. Earlier this month she was named the Bathurst Swim Club's female athlete of the year.
"For me, she's doing pretty much everything you'd expect from an elite swimmer at the moment in terms of we are monitoring all her metrics, her work load, her training load, her stress load and all of that," he said.
"The big thing for her is finding that athletic maturity and full credit to her, the trouble for me is getting her to pull back because she's wanting to do too much. She's stepped up to the Gold Squad and she's really thriving in that athletic environment."
The work Whalan has put into her training - she does nine pool sessions a week - has certainly paid off at recent carnivals.
At Glenbrook last weekend she won gold in each of her breastroke events - the 50m, 100m and 200m - as well as in the 200m individual medley. Whalan also claimed bronze in the 50m backstroke and 100 butterfly events.
"I won all of my breastroke races and I got a good PB in the 50 metres which was great and I did one [PB] in the 200 IM too," Whalan said.
"I've been to the Mudgee and Dubbo carnivals as well and I managed to get a record in each of those two carnivals in the 50 metres breakstroke as well, which was great."
Impressively her record swim at Dubbo came after she had contested the Mount Panorama Punish earlier that morning, being the fourth female finisher outright and first in her 12-18 years female category with a time of 29:42.
There is another carnival at Lithgow which Whalan will likely attend before she and her fellow Bathurst Swim Club members head to Sydney Olympic Park's Aquatic Centre for the state titles on December 12-17.
Naturally the 50m and 100m breastroke events will be on the agenda for Whalan, while she also plans to register for other races.
"It's a pretty big program when you consider you've got to be on for six days in a row, but it does spread out all the races across the days, which is a big change up to what everyone is used to I guess," Stapley said.
"The big target at state for Sienna is to qualify for the National Age Championships in April.
She's been chipping away at all of those times over the last couple of months, she doesn't go to a carnival without PBing in at least one of those breastroke events.
- Josh Stapley
"She went within less than a second of qualifying for nationals in the 100 breastroke at the start of the year, and had COVID not shut us down I'm very confident we would've made that time and maybe the 200 breaststroke as well if we could've gone to another couple of carnivals.
"Now we're in a situation where she's older and the qualifying times are faster, but she's still within strike of the 100 and 200 breaststroke, and the national open 50 breastroke.
"She's been chipping away at all of those times over the last couple of months, she doesn't go to a carnival without PBing in at least one of those breastroke events.
"So we've got big aspirations for state, to be able to go and swim in a fast pool like Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre, in peak form, with a spread out program of events, she's a real shot at getting those national qualifying times, or at least getting close enough that we can hit them early in the new year when we go back to Sydney for the NSW Country Champs in February.
"Its a really exciting time for the club. Two years ago we had huge aspirations of hitting state qualifying times and now we're at the point where 2021 nationals is a realistic goal, and not just for Sienna, but for my whole Gold Squad."
