The Casey TigerSharks’ Victorian Age Championships medal hopes, from left, Tyrone Dobrunz, Craig Watson, Brad York, Stephanie Demestichas, Aleysha Tokai and Andrew Butler. 25504 Picture: Stewart ChambersBy Marc McGowan
THE Casey TigerSharks will take a club-record size team to the Victorian Age Championships over the next month despite the absence of several of their stars.
Forty-two TigerSharks swimmers have qualified for the three state events – five better than this year’s haul.
The two-day Victorian 11-and-under and 12-year-olds Championships start on Saturday before the 13-to-18-year-old age groups take centre stage at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre from 3 to 7 January.
The Victorian Open Championships run between 16 and 18 January.
Casey head coach Ben Hiddlestone has tempered expectations at the club due to the loss of freestylers Trent Lindsey (retirement) and Jemma Phillips (chronic fatigue syndrome) and last season’s break-out star McKenzie Cunningham (virus).
But Hiddlestone is banking on a new raft of talent, including Stephanie Demestichas, Andrew Butler and Caitlin Collingwood, to help the TigerSharks register a top-10 finish for the third straight year.
“It’s been a really unlucky season – put it that way – and we’re looking towards next season already,” Hiddlestone said.
“We were really lucky last season with health, but we’ve been really unlucky this season.”
Hiddlestone and his assistant, James Fox, developed a new training squad for ‘young guns’ a few months ago and are hoping to reap the benefits at the state championships.
“We had a bunch of 11 and 12-year-olds in our state squad who were keen as anything and wanting to train more,” he said.
“We wanted to expose them to our national squad training a bit more, so we created a new group called the young guns squad.
“We took them out of the state squad and gave them access to any type of training – it’s a bit of a pet project.”
The usual suspects, Craig Watson, Aleysha Tokai, Tyrone Dobrunz, Arnon Lodder – fresh from gold at the Pacific School Games – and Matthew Charlesworth, will lead Casey’s charge, but Demestichas also looks set for success in the distance freestyle events.
“Steph Demestichas is ranked number two in Australia for 14-year-old girls in the 1500m based on the last 11 months,” Hiddlestone said.
“It’s just the 800m at states, but she’s only a couple of seconds off the open national time and, for a 14-year-old girl, that’s unbelievable.
“She’s training the house down and a lot of the guys respect her now.”
Butler is another who has caught Hiddlestone’s attention with his impressive development over the past year.
The 13-year-old – who Hiddlestone compares to Lindsey – who just missed out on qualifying in the 200m and 400m freestyle, but will compete in the 100m freestyle and butterfly.
Others set to impress include open-age all-rounder Brad York and pocket rocket butterflier Olivia Raiti.
