Pooled resources help outback teen swimmers make a splash against city counterparts

Veniece Coorey (left) and Scarlett Molloy recently competed at the Australian Age Championships.  (ABC Broken Hill: Josh Mercer )

Despite growing up in outback New South Wales, 14-year-old Scarlett Molloy has always loved the water.

So much so that her parents signed her up to a local swim club in Broken Hill, to hone her skills to a competitive level.

“I probably first started training with a swimming club at five years old, and it’s because my older sister swam, so I just started,” she said.

In April, Scarlett and her teammate at the Silver City Swim Club, Veniece Coorey, competed at the Australian Age Championships on the Gold Coast.

Based on Scarlett’s previous swim times, she was ranked 62 out of 66 swimmers for the 100-metere breaststroke.

But it didn’t stay that way for long.

On the day of the competition, Scarlett showed she belonged in the top 50, setting a new personal best by shaving a full second off her time.

“It was a great experience to swim against people that I don’t usually swim against,” Scarlett said.

“And also, just to experience the atmosphere of nationals.”

Doing the regions proud

Regional centres were well represented at the championships, with swimmers from Albury, Wagga Wagga and Young placing in the top 10.

Turning 13 just before the event kicked off, Veniece Coorey was one of the youngest competitors.

Despite being nervous, she put in a good performance, going from 47 to 35 in the rankings.

“I was on PB [personal best] pace [for both events], my closet one was like 0.7 off my 200 breaststroke,” Veniece said.

“I will train hard to come back next year, and hopefully get faster.”

Both Scarlett and Veniece haven’t had much down time since coming back from the Australian Age Championships, with both set to compete at the Combined High Schools Swimming Championships in Sydney from May 13 to 15.

Veniece wants to carry her good form on to the Sydney Aquatic Centre.

“[I want to] get more PBs and hopefully make it to finals one night,” she said.

Scarlett believes her experience at nationals will help her against some familiar faces.

“Some of the people that we swam against at nationals will be at this combined high schools,” she said.

“We’ve been practising swimming faster in the morning, and I think continuing that.”

Three clubs are a crowd for one pool

Two decades ago, Scarlett and Veniece’s hometown of Broken Hill had three swimming clubs but just one pool.

The Alma swimming pool had closed down in 2003, then in 2008 the Aquatic Centre permanently closed its 50-metre pool.

This left the town with just one pool for nearly 20,000 people.

Swim coach Ricky Shore and his family put their heads together.

“My father and brother-in-law decided, ‘why don’t we bite the bullet and let’s build our own facility,'” he said.

In September 2009, Silver City Swim Centre was built.

The family’s facility features a 25-metre pool as well as kicker blocks and backstroke ledgers – equipment that wouldn’t be out of place for swimmers in bigger cities.

“[We built the pool] predominantly to produce competitive swimmers, but at the same time, to give swimmers of all levels opportunities to experience the sport and see if they like it and how far they can get,” he said.

Mr Shore wanted to ensure competitive swimming wasn’t lost to the Silver City.

“Competitive swimming was starting to wane out a bit, we have had a history of having some really great swimmers, age group swimmers, back in the day,” he said.

“And it looked like, if we didn’t put any more time into trying to create competitive swimmers that could compete with the best in the cities and also other regional areas, we might lose the sport and that would have been a horrible thing to happen.”

However, it’s not all about producing competitive swimmers.

“The first thing is to have fun, learn the skills and see how far the sport takes you,” Mr Shore said.

“And a lot of the swimmers fall in love with the sport.”