Melita makes national A final

Northland swimmer Melita Raravula's performance at the New Zealand Swimming Championships provided plenty of the food for thought for her and coach Monica Cooper.
The 14-year-old Northwave Swim Club talent headed into last week's Opens at Auckland's West Wave Pool after peaking for the National Age Group Championships in Wellington last month, where she claimed six medals and set several Northland records.
While she only qualified for two events at her first NZ Open campaign in 2010, Raravula qualified for the 50m, 100m and 200m breaststroke, 50m and 100m butterfly and the 100m and 200m freestyle this year; competing every day at the six-day meet which was a huge learning curve for her, coach Cooper said.
"As with any age-grouper, we targeted the NZ Age Groups as a priority performance meeting for Melita, while the Opens was more an educational meeting. Melita is very young to swim at open level so she still has plenty of learning to do, but competing at the Opens was a very useful thing to do," she said.
Raravula achieved her best result in one of her favoured events, the 50m breaststroke, where she made the A-final. Stepping up to make the top eight after ranking 10th heading into the Opens.
Raravula was just off her seed time of 34.12s in the final, coming home in 34.58s in eighth place, a stroke behind the rest of the field.
Raravula just missed out in making the A final in the 50m butterfly, but finished second in the B final. She was sixth in the 100m butterfly B final, fifth in the 100m breaststroke B final and 13th overall in the 200m breaststroke. She swam two personal best times in the process.
The Pompallier College Year 10 student has two full weeks out of the pool now, before starting her build-up to the NZ Shortcourse Age Groups and Open Championships in August.
Meanwhile, the group of swimmers from the Bay of Islands Swim Club who qualified for the Opens also performed credibly.
Having moved recently from Auckland, 23-year-old Shane Smith placed seventh in the men's 50m breastsroke A final, and also swam two personal bests (PB) at the championships.
Given the size of the Bay of Islands club, the women's 4x100m freestyle relay team of Jayne Clarke, Oceane Maihi, Ashlee Crane and Carla Marsh did well to place sixth, while the women's 4x100m medley relay team of Marsh, Maihi, Crane and Sarah Gorman were eighth.
Marsh swam three PBs out of her five swims, and made B final of the 200m individual medley, while Maihi was eighth in the 50m breaststroke B final. Crane was 10th in the 200m butterfly event, while Gorman achieved a PB.