Will NSW’s next Olympic swimming champion come from Broken Hill?
It’s a dusty outback NSW town that has produced some of Australia’s best sportspeople, with promising signs a gold medal swimmer will be next.
Education
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There is something in the water out Broken Hill way.
That’s if you can find it. The Silver City at the western end of NSW and on the edge of Australia’s dusty red centre doesn’t have much H2O but it has gold medal swimmers in abundance.
Broken Hill swimmers punch above their weight, including national 16-year-old age breaststroke champion Kalyce Pressler — currently third in Australia for her age — and Ellysia Oldsen who won the national open gold medal for butterfly in 2019.
The next generation of hopefuls from Broken Hill were a handful of the 1480 students who beat 395,000 other students to make the Primary School Sports Association swimming finals at Sydney Olympic Park this week.
They included Broken Hill’s 11-year-old Scarlett Molloy who started swimming from five years of age. “I have been training and a lot of the hard work pays off. I have made it to the finals of breaststroke,” she said.
Her mum Sarah Molloy said having accomplished swimmers involved in the sport in their hometown helped inspire the children.
“We have some talented swimmers in Broken Hill. Our club captain is the national age champion in breaststroke, Kalyce Pressler, and we have three national swimmers in our club,” she said.
It was a similar story for Broken Hill girl Sienna Bevan, 11, who started swimming from six months of age and now trains five or six times a week for at least 90 minutes a day.
“It is just fun,” she said. Her mother Peta Bevan said her success was down to her love of sport including basketball and netball.
“It is the joy of being a country kid,” she said.
Broken Hill Aquatic Stingrays president Ben Clavel said the strong swimming culture could be traced back to the healthy sense of competition among the town’s three swimming clubs.
“We have a very healthy rivalry. And as much as we are perceived to be a town in the middle of the desert, a lot of the activities we do focus around water,” he said.
“I don’t know what it is — it is a history of sport in Broken Hill because of the distance of where we are, we have good competitions,” he said.
The other swim club includes Alma Swimming Club and the Silver City Swim Club. Silver City Swim Club spokeswoman Angela Oldsen said the club had a friendly culture but also gave young children opportunities for competition from an early age.
“We have one family with five kids including a five-year-old who is swimming 200m races, the opportunity is there and they are enjoying what they’re doing,” she said.
Other Broken Hill alumni who have gone onto the national and international sporting stage include the likes of gymnast Marina Sulicich who competed at the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games.
AFL success stories include Adelaide Crows player Taylor Walker, GWS Giants Isaac Cumming and retired player West Coast Eagles’ Brent Staker.
BROKEN HILL’S TOP ATHLETES
- Taylor Walker — Adelaide Crows AFL player
- Brent Staker AFL — Former West Coast Eagles AFL player
- Samantha Betts — South Australian Scorpions and Perth Scorchers cricket player
- Issac Cumming — GWS Giants AFL Player
- Ben Grossi — Single Action Shot National Championships winner
- Marina Sulicich — gymnast who competed at the 1980 Moscow Olympics
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