Ann Migheli, from Inverell Swimming Club, said it was the second time in five years the Inverell club had hosted the event.

“The kids were competing for age champions as well as placements in development squads, ranging from ‘A squad’ all the way down to our ‘E development squad’,” Mrs Migheli said. “It means that they’ll get additional coaching and sessions in the winter break, and can get to go away to other special meets, and get to develop their swimming.” She said there was a lot more happening on the day than just a lot of kids swimming.

“We’ve got a lot of parents coming in and getting trained up as technical officials, which means that they can then work on pool deck down in Sydney and at much larger meets,” Mrs Migheli said.

“Inverell Swimming Club is quite active in this area, and often puts its hand up to host events like this.

“Anything like that, as long as the committee is supportive, is always looked at, and we try, as an area, move it around so that different towns get the opportunity.”

So would the swimming club stand have more of an opportunity to host more of these types of events if Inverell had an Olympic sized pool?

“Oh, an eight-lane or 10-lane pool would be amazing. Particularly indoors, 10-lanes indoors would be awesome,” Mrs Migheli said.

“There were lots of personal bests, I think there were a dozen area records set on Saturday, we had 84 kids qualify to go to Sydney for Speedo finals, which is one of our biggest squads.

“Over the weekend, we also had kids trying to qualify for state and nationals. The kids have been great and we had a lot of success.”