Each week from now until the annual ASB YSPOTY awards function on November 28, we profile past winners as we count down to the 25th annual event which honours the top young college sportspeople in the region.
Corney Swanepoel (Rangitoto) 2004
In 2004, Corney Swanepoel was 18 and staring at the bottom of the Millennium pool most mornings before heading over to Rangitoto College.
He was on his way to the Athens Olympics as one of New Zealand's top young butterfly swim specialists.
In 2015, he is 29 and an insurance adviser, specialising in personal and business risk management for a brokerage in Auckland called Absolute Insurance. Married and about to become a father, Swanepoel retired from swimming in 2012 after just missing out on qualifying for his third Olympic Games.
He recalls the 2004 ASB Awards evening, but not the speaker.
"That's not because I didn't enjoy their talk - I was probably just wiped out as I had come from my second training session of the day and had a full day at school in between and generally at that point of my life most evenings at that time I was a borderline zombie after the rigours of school and training," he explains. Many swimmers will sympathise.
Swanepoel still holds the national 50m and 100m butterfly records, but his career highlight came in 2008.
"I had a very good year and broke the NZ long and short course records several times that year for the 50 and 100 butterfly. Individually I had some great results at the world short course championships in Manchester that year and I broke the 50 and 100 butterfly records in the 100m fly race. I have never broken two records in one race and I don't know anyone else that has so I was pretty amused. Our medley relay team also got a bronze medal on the final day of the competition and got a Commonwealth record. The sweetest part was beating Australia out for the bronze and taking their record."
Melissa Ingram (Epsom Girls' Grammar) 2002
Melissa Ingram. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Melissa Ingram hung up the goggles in 2013, but from 2002 she was one of New Zealand's top backstrokers.
In 2002, she was in Year 12 at EGGS and swam at the Manchester Commonwealth Games, aged just 16.
"2002 was a breakthrough year for me. To qualify for the Commonwealth Games at 16 was awesome, but also daunting. Travelling to the other side of the world to compete with women a lot older than me was intimidating, but I loved every minute of it. I felt like I grew up a lot that year and I had an amazing opportunity to experience something that other people my age usually don't get to do. I didn't get a lot of schoolwork done that year so I had to work really hard in my seventh form year to get an A Bursary because I wanted to study law."
Ingram still has vivid memories of the ASB Awards night that year.
"It was a real privilege to win the award after seeing the sporting greats who had won it in the years before me."
Career highlights were many. The 2008 Olympics Games in Beijing were special, as was a bronze medal in the 2004 world short-course championships, plus another bronze in the 4x200m freestyle relay at the 2006 Commonwealth Games.
"Qualifying for the 2008 Olympics in an NZ record time was an amazing feeling," she says.
Now 30, Ingram is the communications manager at NZ Tertiary College.
Nominations for the 2015 ASB YSPOTY Awards are now open. They should be submitted by September 23. Further information, along with the chart of eligibility, is available on www.collegesport.co.nz.
