Young champ was quietly confident

Geraldton’s newest State champion, Flynn Scott, was quietly confident going into his first major aged and open swimming event last month, but even he didn’t think he would perform quite so well.

Not only did the 13-year-old make the finals in each of the eight events that he entered, he also won five medals, including the gold in the 200m freestyle, which he secured with a time of 2min. 8sec.

“I was quite surprised I took that one out,” he said.

“But it was about the time that I thought I was going to do. I was quite happy with that one.”

Aside from taking out the State title, Flynn also swam four national qualifying times, which means he will be heading to Adelaide in late March for the Georgina Hope Aged National Championships.

The youngster is excited about the opportunity, but also knows what it means in terms of training.

“Just lots of it, step it up a bit more,” he said.

“I want to try and knock quite a bit off in the longer events and try and get as much off as possible… (so) leading up to nationals I’ll start doing about eight two-hour sessions a week.”

Flynn’s coach Jason Scott, who is also his father, said he was thrilled to see him get reward for effort.

“He’d done a lot of hard work so I was pretty confident that he would have some good results,” he said.

“He’s always the keenest to get out there and push hard, so he deserves the accolades he gets. He never slacks off. It’s great to see Geraldton get a representative at national level after about 10 years.”

Just like his preparation for the State championships, Flynn isn’t getting ahead of himself — instead he’s just going to concentrate on the things that he can control.

“Swim as hard as I can, try and make finals (and) just do my best,” he said.

The Australian Age Swimming Championships will run from March 28 to April 4.