Commwealth Games: Meet our new teen Aussie swim stars
Here’s the Top 40 Queensland teen swimmers you’ll be cheering for when they represent Australia at the Commonwealth Games, world titles and junior Dolphins’ meets.
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They are the new faces on the Australian Dolphins swimming team, next generation young guns who this week have taken the gigantic step from junior to Commonwealth Games selection.
Meet this Super Seven of Queensland swimming, rookies who are about to burst into the spotlight after winning places on the hotly contested Dolphins swimming team.
At last year’s Olympic Games, Terrace old boy Tom O’Neill (Rackley Centenary), Mt St Michael’s product Meg Harris, Gold Coast’s Chelsea Hodges, Bundy boy Isaac Cooper and St Peters schoolgirl Mollie O’Callaghan emerged as team babes to win Olympic selection - and most of them medal.
And now another Super Seven have flowed into the Dolphins team.
We present them below - along with the names of the 17 Queensland kids on the junior Aussie Dolphins team, and another 14 on the Australia A side bound for the USA.
Queensland dominated the 31 person junior squad, with the likes of Jaclyn Barclay (St Peters Western), Hannah Casey (MCA), Milla Jansen (Bond), Tiana Kritzinger (Nudgee College), Sophie Martin (Somerville House), Jamie Perkins (St Peters) and Amelia Weber (St Peters) in the team.
And the Aussie A side is full great improvers like Dylan Andrea and Kai Taylor, and also full of the ultra persistent types like Rebecca Jacobson and Tahlia Thornton. Those teams below in this story.
LIZ DEKKERS
Brisbane teenager Liz Dekkers has fought off illness and beaten the sporting demons to win a place on the Australian Dolphinsswimming team bound for the Commonwealth Games and world championships this year.
With none other than Madam Butterfly, the great Susie O’Neill, willing her to success, Dekkers redeemed herself on Sundaynight’s national championships after misfiring 12 months earlier at the Olympic trials when she missed the start and panickedin her stroke.
“It means so much after such a hard and difficult year to put the race together that I felt like I should have produced last year,’’ said Dekkers, who will swim the 200m butterfly.
“I had confidence in myself to swim that race and it was so relieving.’’
Dekkers’ co-coach at Newmarket Racers Swim Club Steve Miller said after the disappointment from 12 months earlier, Dekkers had a “monkey on her back’’ when she listened for the starting gun over the weekend.
Even O’Neill, who displayed nerves of steel during her three Olympic campaigns for eight medals, was nervous for Dekkers priorto the race.
“I am really happy for her and I was actually nervous for her because I heard on the coverage that Lizzie had been sick,’’ said O’Neill, a family friend through Dekkers’ friendship with her daughter Alix.
O’Neill said standing on the blocks at an Australian selection trial was a lonely and nerve racking place to be.
“You only have the once chance and can’t make any mistakes. She made a mistake (in 2021) and that (missing the Olympics) is what happened.’’
“For Liz to come back from that, keep training, finish year 12 and keep motivated - it sounds easy to do but it is actuallynot easy,’’ O’Neill praised.
Miller, who along with his father Bob has coached Dekkers since she was a child, said her personal best 200m butterfly timeranked her No. 5-No. 6 in the world.
“The monkey is off her back now and I think she can really grow from this experience,’’ Miller said.
SAM SHORT
Years of shoulder aching work has been rewarded with Short’s selection on his first Australian senior team.
A humble junior champion, Short has been a 400m, 800m and 1500m All Ages superstar, last year breaking the 18 years age record of the great Kieran Perkins (400m) and stalking the junior deeds of Mack Horton, Grant Hackett and even Ian Thorpe.
Now he is breaking out of the shadows of those greats and making his own way in the sport - but only after a lot of hard work, the likes of which only fellow distance swimmers can appreciate.
“A grind is a good way to put it,’’ said Short, 18, reflecting in the months and years leading up to last weekend’s national trials.
“I felt like even if I have got a little bit of success along the way, there has always been that big picture that I have always been striving towards.
“And this year has specifically has been a very long prep.’’
Missing the world junior championships as a 15-year-old, and then the disappointment of not being able to travel to a world junior championships two and three years later due to COVID restrictions, were all setbacks which made him stronger, even more hungry.
Short, 17, will fit snugly into the team touring environment like a duck to water and will be well suited to being a member of an overseas touring squad.
Outlining his love of team play was his appearance in March this year at Australian Surf Life Saving Championships where he helped his Maroochydore mates Joel Piper and Ollie Monaghan win the Taplin relays - the trio’s second 19 years championship win in a row.
His appearance was not expected because he was on the Sunshine Coast for a swimming training camp, but could not resist helping out his mates.
“I always love representing Maroochy and I jumped in and helped with a couple of relays and got a couple of wins,’’ he said.
The 2021 school captain at Prince of Peace Lutheran College, Everton Hills, Short started his swimming career under Richard Sleight at Albany Creek before progressing in the last two years to Damien Jones at Rackley Centenary.
As a child, his mum Nicole said her son was always “just naturally buoyant’’.
“Aged six he just took to it like a duck to water. He only did one season of learning to swim and he could swim. He was straight into the water,'' she recalled.
Both Jones and Sleight as his coaches have had a huge influence on him, as has Roger Fitzgerald, a well known Brisbane physiotherapist.
ELLA RAMSAY
She has been a shooting star of junior swimming for five years, and now Ella Ramsay’s date with destiny has arrived following her selection in the Australian Dolphins team bound for the world championships and the Commonwealth Games.
Ramsay, 17, the daughter of Olympic swimmer Heath, has made the squad as a 200m IM swimmer after blasting her way into the national team with a stunning personal best time of 2:12.12 minutes - more than one and a half seconds better than her previous PB.
Asked where her PB time came from, Ramsay said: “I honestly have no idea where I pulled that swim from.
“I was much more apprehensive coming into this final than I am with previous events.
“I didn’t give the race much thought until I was practically standing behind the blocks, preparing to dive in for the race.
“Following my 400m IM PB, I gained a bit of confidence but I had no clue I’d go that time in the 200m IM.’’
This was after her confidence and thoughts were “all over the place as I approached the trials’’ after disruptions to preparation earlier in the year.
The year 12 student at St Peters Lutheran College Springfield is from the swimming stable of Australian coach Dean Boxall at St Peters Western.
But before then her formative years were spent under the guidance of her father, Olympian Heath who runs the Heath Ramsay SwimCentre at WestMAC - the school she attended as a primary student.
Ramsay said it was amazing to follow in her dad’s footsteps by representing Australia.
“Being on the same boat as dad and now being called an Aussie Dolphin is pretty sick.
“So hopefully, like him, I will be able to compete in the Olympics one day.’’
Ella’s mum Rebecca added: “Her dad has been alongside her since her journey started (aged 5-6).’’
Aside from her father and Boxall, other coaches who have helped Ramsay on her journey include Stewart Melton, John Gatwick, Boxall’s co-coach at St Peters Western Maxine Seear.
Ramsay said transitioning from a successful All Ages junior career to open meetings was hard because there was “no room for error’’, although she enjoyed the atmosphere of open meetings because “all the girls are so kind’’.
BRONE JOB
A schoolboy mate of Liz Dekkers at All Hallows’ School, Job’s selection completes a wonderful comeback for the 50m backstroke whiz from Damien Jones’ Rackley Centenary swimming stable.
Job, 19, hit the headlines before any of her peers when she won the world junior championship 50m gold medal in 2019.
Her teammates included Mollie O’Callaghan, winner of three Olympic medals last year, Tom O’Neill (Tokyo bronze medallis) and Liz Dekkers - yet Job was a headline act.
But in the hustle and bustle of life as a year 12 student, Job slipped slightly off the radar under the former East Brisbane Jets swim junior found her mojo again under Jones at Rackley.
“I am absolutely over the moon for Bronte,’’ Jones said.
“She has overcome a very challenging start to the year and most athletes her age wouldn’t have handled the adversity as well as she has.
“This experience will set her up for future success in Paris (Olympic Games, 2024).’’
JENNA FORRESTER
From South African stock, tough as teak Forrester was an All Ages star who went close to Australian Dolphins team selection for last year’s Olympic Games.
A St Peters Lutheran College alumni, Forrester, 19, has powerful shoulders and a big heart and as a 400M individual medley specialist, she is well suited to the gruelling event.
Her 2021 achievements included breaking Kaylee McKewon’s age record for the IM and making the Australian team for the World University Games.
She then went within a whisker of the Olympic team.
A world junior swimming championship representative and leading light at All Ages junior national championships over the years, Forrester has been at St Peters Western since aged 11 and in recent years has been directly coached by the renowned Dean Boxall.
LANI PALLISTER
Sunshine Coast sporting enthusiasts will know the name well. Pallister has been a schoolgirl swimming prodigy who, like Ella Ramsay, has the honour of being coached by her Olympic swimming parent - Janelle Elford.
A team mate of O’Neill, Dekkers, O’Callaghan and Job’s on the 2019 world championship team, Pallister was a junior young gun whose progress into the Australian senior side has been steady - not sudden.
But aged 19, she has arrived for the big dance now, two years after switching from the Sunny Coast to Griffith University on the Gold Coast - a club overseen by Australia’s most successful Olympic swimming coaches - but one of Australia’s most successful sporting coaches - Michael Bohl.
“Lani has had a great breakthrough performance and she is improving nicely with PBs in the 200m, 400m, 800m and 1500m freestyle in international class times,’’ Bohl said.
“He is transitioning into a senior athlete after having junior success.’’
Bohl also has another teenager on the Dolphins team - Perth-raised Joshua Edwards-Smith, aged 18. “He has a great attitude, his commitment is superb and he has awesome potential.’’
FLYNN SOUTHAM
He hailed from over the border in Tweed Heads but he is as Queensland as cricket legend Sam Trimble and Maroons league legend Barry Muir - both Queensland immortals raised just over the Tweed River.
The name Flynn Southam has been on everyone’s lips for some time - and now he has crashed into the Australian team aged just 16 years as a 100m, 200m freestyle swimming.
Aged 16, he has been a junior superstar whose reputation exploded after breaking Kyle Chalmers’ age group records but said he learnt a lot from his first crack at open age.
“You come here and these guys are the best of the best, they have the best skills in the world. It’s very different,” Southam told News Corp chef Olympic writer Julian Linden over the weekend.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday Swimming Australia revealed the junior Dolphins team and the Australia A teams which will also compete this year.
Queenslanders in Junior Dolphins are: Jaclyn Barclay (St Peters Western), Hannah Casey (MCA), Milla Jansen (Bond), Tiana Kritzinger (Nudgee College), Sophie Martin (Somerville House), Jamie Perkins (St Peters Western), Georgie Roper (Griffith), Sally Vagg (Rocky City), Amelia Weber (St Peters Western), Jesse Coleman (Bond), Joshua Collett (Bond), Benjamin Goedemans (Acacia Byside), Mathew Magnussen (Nudgee College), Ike Martinez (Rackley), Anders McAlpine (Chandler), Flynn Southam (Bond), Joshua Staples (St Peters Western).
Queenslanders in the Australia A team are: Gemma Cooney (Brisbane Grammar), Madeleine Gough (Chandler), Rebecca Jacobson (Rackley), Talara Jade-Dixon (St Hildas), Mia O’Leary (Bond), Mikayla Smith (Miami), Tahlia Thornton (USC Spartans), Ashton Brinkworth (USC Spartans), Dylan Andrea (Nudgee College), Ty Hartwell (Chandler), Thomas Hauck (All Saints), Kalani Ireland (Somerville House), Joseph Jackson (Brisbane Grammar), Kai Taylor (St Peters Western).
Arguably the biggest bolter into either team is Nudgee College rookie Dylan Andrea who entered the Australian championships last week ranked No.30 in the open 100m - and finished sixth.
Indeed the David Proud-coached athlete produced an extraordinary personal best time at the championships, having carved a mind boggling 1.34 seconds off his PB in the last 12 months to finish with a time of 49.12 seconds.
He missed the Australian world championship by a fraction of a second and would have been the biggest bolter into the squad this side of the black stump.
Andrea was a member of the Threepeat Nudgee College swimming team which won three GPS championships in a row in 2019, 2020 and 2021, including being co-captain.
But his times were stalled when he suffered glandular fever and only in the last 12 months has he started to regain full fitness.
Andrea, who went to kindy with new Dolphins butterfly teen Dekkers, is part of a white hot group of 100m Aussie sprinters which includes Kai Taylor (St Peters Western) who in 12 months has gone from just over 50 seconds for the 100m, down to a blistering 49.14.
Selection in this squad is also a reward for never-say-die Rebecca Jacobson (Rackley) who has been a long time training partner of Australia Dolphins senior new comer, Sam Short, first at Albany Creek and now at Rackley Centenary.
Coached at the time by St Peters Richard Sleight when she was at Albany Creek, Jacobson made the same world junior championship side in 2019 alongside Dekkers, Bronte Job, Tahlia Thorton, Lani Pallister and Olympic medallists Tom O’Neill and Mollie O’Callaghan.
She grew on confidence at those championships, and finished with two relay medals.
Jacobson has been ploughing away under Damien Jones at Rackley Centenary and her selection is wonderful reward while also being additional encouragement.
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