Bathurst Swim Club defends their Mountains And Plains Swimming Championships title

With more than 50 gold medals to their names plus five individual age championships there was no stopping the Bathurst boys and girls from continuing their reign at the top.

The club came away with 129 medals in the course of their title defence, with 56 of those being gold.

There were a host of stunning individual performance for the club as five swimmers came away with age champion prizes.

Those awards belonged to Jack Mulligan (13 years boys), Caleb Cashman (14 years boys), Tyler Johnson (16 years boys), Bryce Bollinger (16 years multi class) and Violet Henson (Opens girls distance).

Bathurst Swim Club head coach Josh Stapley said going back-to-back was a great thrill.

"It certainly was the big goal for us to defend that title," he said.

"We knew it was going to be a bit more difficult this year with Orange hosting, so we knew they'd have good numbers, and we saw two clubs in the Blue Mountains merge since our last MPS championships.

"I set my guys the expectation to step up to try and retain that trophy and they certainly did that in numbers with their event entries. Orange had more swimmers than us but we had more entries, which put us in a strong position.

"You still need the performances to back that up but our guys certainly did that over the course of the two days."

Stapley said the weekend's spotlight shone on the club's younger members.

"A lot of the older guys were coming off the back of state and had only been coming off only a couple of days' training, which meant that our younger guys had to do a little bit more," he said.

"That meant PBs were probably a little lacking for our older swimmers but the younger ones definitely stood up. Probably around a quarter of our swims were PBs, which was still a really great outcome.

"As individuals we had quite a few swimmers come away with age championships. They came together in that and for the relays as well, along with the individual success, and that's what led to the dominant victory on the pointscore."

The next major event on the cards for the Bathurst Swim Club will be the NSW Country Championships from February 18 to 20 at the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre.

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