Swimming: Magic returns to Cameron Pool

Paul Kent has returned to Roskill Swim Club as director of coaching. Photo / Richard Robinson

Roskill Swim Club was once the hub of New Zealand's competitive swim scene. Hilton Brown, Anthony Mosse, Paul Kingsman, Trent Bray and Paul Kent were big fish swimming out of the little Cameron Pool and the club was the envy of many.

Things changed. Swimming changed. Centralised structures were put in place and hegemony was created out of the North Shore Swim Club under Jan Cameron.

Roskill didn't just fade from view, it basically ceased to exist. Until about a year ago, when Stephen Peterson, through CLM, a company that manages council-owned facilities, picked up the site and brought Swim Magic - their swim school brand - to Cameron Pool.

At the same time Kent came enthusiastically on board, the club was resuscitated and rebranded Roskill Magic and last week, at the Open Championships that doubled as the Commonwealth Games trial, they stunned themselves by finishing second in points to North Shore.

"Nine months ago, that was the furthest thing from my mind," Kent said. "We didn't go there to get second, it just happened."

Roskill's decline owed much to the emergence of North Shore and the emphasis on the International Training Centre.

"About eight to 10 years ago Jan Cameron hired the coach who was down here and he went to North Shore; that was really the end of the club programme at this pool," Peterson said.

"Before North Shore, this was the hub," Kent continued. "But when I walked in here a year ago there was basically no one in the pool. The club was advised to amalgamate, the committee was at its wit's end. They had a junior programme operating a couple of times a week, but nothing else."

On the face of it, Kent, the director of coaching, might seem a strange choice to be the face of the club.

A keen swimmer until the age of 13, he then quit until taking up the sport again at 20 after enjoying a hiatus that included a two-packs-a-day habit and "a shedload of piss". He's been kicked out of the club twice, once for giving a coach the fingers and another time he was hauled in front of the club committee for refusing to attend club nationals (he had chronic fatigue syndrome).

At one stage a trespass notice prevented him entering the clubrooms that overlook Cameron Pool.

When the former world No 1 breaststroker returned last year, the musty committee room, replete with a trophy cabinet full of cups and mementos that hadn't been handed out in years, brought back bad memories of disciplinary hearings. So in went a table-tennis table and a Wii console.

"It's about getting the kids swimming," Kent emphasises, saying the results were shocking [in a good way] at the Open Championships, but their main motivation was to get kids back into swimming with a solid club structure behind them.

Few suburbs represent the changing face of New Zealand as Mt Roskill does. Alongside the long-established European and Maori communities there are large numbers of Pacific Island, Chinese and Indian families.

Despite swimming being seen by many as a white sport, Roskill Magic's junior programme is starting to reflect its community.

"We've got a lot of Indian and Chinese in the swim school programme," Peterson said. Kent, who has spent most of his 38 years in the Mt Roskill community, recounted the time he had an Australian swim coach pop into the pool. "He was talking to me at the side of the pool and said, 'Geez, it's dark in here'. I said, 'Oh yeah, the lighting could be better, it's quite old.' He said, 'No, I mean it's dark in here. I looked around and clicked: 'I see what you're saying,' I said, 'but I just don't see it'. "Swimming should not be a nationality thing."

To attract young swimmers, Kent has been careful to break down the perception that the only way to become a competitive swimmer is to put yourself through endless, repetitive grind. He knows, through his own experiences, that it is a turn-off for kids who could be potential world-beaters.

"I don't want kids dragging their feet out of the pool, I want them bouncing out," Kent says. "There has to be enjoyment, variety, dry-land programmes. I take a longer-term approach to their swimming than a lot of the programmes out there."

Kent and Peterson share a bright vision of the future. Already they have names they believe will one day attract headlines. There's Nielsen Varoy, a seven-footer of immense potential, taken back from waterpolo. There's Willy Benson and Danielle Koni, but the one Kent believes will one day be in lights is Luke Westgaard, a kid he spotted swimming in a public lane and who he thinks could be one of New Zealand's great breastrokers.

For the sake of New Zealand swimming, let's hope it's a case of it takes one to know one.

ROSKILL PODIUMS
* Danielle Koni: 50m fly (1st); 50m back (3rd)
* Willy Benson: 100m free (3rd); 50m free (2nd); 50m fly (2nd)
* Sharn Simpson: 200m breast (3rd)
* Luke Westgaard: 100m breast (3rd)
* Corney Swanepoel: 100m fly (2nd); 50m fly (1st)
* Also: 400m free relay (2nd); 400m medley relay (2nd)