Halfway home: Bond Swimming's half-year report

There’s something special in the water at Bond.

A program-record four swimmers — Flynn Southam, Jesse Coleman, Hannah Casey and Milla Jansen — will represent Australia at next month’s World Championships in Singapore, capping off a blistering first half of the year for Bond Swimming. Head Coach Chris Mooney will join them on the Dolphins coaching staff, underlining the calibre of the program and adding to his peerless record for getting rookie swimmers onto Australian teams. 

Ben Armbruster, Josh Collett and Layla Day are off to the US with Australia A. Theese national selections followed Bond’s complete domination of UniSport Nationals and a series of personal bests and breakout swims at trials. In his mid-year report, Director of Swimming Kyle Samuelson highlights the athletes, coaches and team culture driving results — and why this could be just the beginning.

From Jesse Coleman’s long-awaited breakthrough to Flynn Southam’s statement swims, and from Lani Connolly’s steady rise to Josh Collette’s team-first example, Bond Swimming is proving that elite results are no accident — they’re built, day by day, at The Canal.

The Standouts 

Jesse Coleman and Flynn Southam. Jesse is making his senior team debut in the 100m butterfly at the World Championships after qualifying with a PB. He narrowly missed the team for the World Short Course Championships last year, on a selection call after making a qualifying time. So he’s been there and thereabouts for a while. He’s not a big guy, but he punches way above his weight. Technically he is really good and his skills have improved a lot as well. 

And the trials were a breakthrough meet for Flynn. He’s been stuck on those times for a couple of years now. So, he's dropped under 1:46 for the 200m and he's gone sub 48 seconds in the 100m freestyle again. I think being able to go to World Championships and swim individually in the 200m and100m is going to be a valuable experience for him. Something we speak about here in the program is Flynn being consistently in the top two for those events. Someone with his ability at his age, I think he’s got a good future in those two events. 

Jesse has been here since he was 14 and Flynn since he was ten, so they are both long term members of the program who have trusted and stuck with it and now we get to see the results off the back of that. 

For the girls we have seen a lot of improvement across the board. I think Hannah Casey going from a 1:58 in the 200m freestyle, which she hadn't been under in two years, to 1:57:05 and then 1:56:09 to make the team – that is a huge drop across four laps of freestyle. It is a massive improvement. She is super talented, but you still need to be able to put the results on the board and I think her first year here she was struggling a little bit adapting to the new program and also studying and living by herself. And there was a trust in the process from her. About this time last year, we sat down and just said, you’ve got to dig in, back it. And she did, and she's come out the other side. 

The Dolphins squad features Flynn, Jesse, Hannah and Milla Jansen as well as Max Giuliani and Elijah Winnington, who also study at Bond University. All are recipients of the Hancock Prospecting Swimming Excellence Scholarship which is evidence of the incredible value that scholarship brings to our program and Australian swimming.  

The big improvers 

Tilly King has improved a lot, she’s shaved a couple of seconds off in 18 months and she swam really well at UniSport Nationals where she won the 50m and got a medal in the 100m breaststroke as well. 

Milla Jansen has been dealing with some shoulder injuries, so she's done really well to take a little bit of time off her 100m freestyle PB at the trials to make the Dolphins team for the World Championships for her second senior national team off the back of World Short Course last year.

The Surprise Packet  

Lani Connolly has come a long way. I think her and Zander have a really good coach - athlete relationship. They work well together but also, she's very good at listening and applying herself. Her skills have improved a lot and she's trusted the technical work they've done. Lani has gone from a 1:10:40 in the 100m breaststroke down to a 1:08:90. In breaststroke, at her age, that is a big drop. She is an Olympian Lani, but I think she made her first FINA qualifying time at UniSport Nationals in the 100m, before that she'd been picked on universality rules through World Aquatics. This was the first cut she ever made, so that was a really big moment for her and that was great to see.

The People’s Champ

It is a tight one, but Josh Collett is hard to go past. He brings a lot of positive energy. Josh made his senior team debut at World Short Course late last year and has raced really well this year. He did a season's best at trials last week, but narrowly missed second place by 0.01. But for the rest of the meet he was upbeat, brought the energy to the pool deck and didn’t tail off once his events were over. He's a very good team player. Day to day in swimming it can get a little bit boring at times, turning up every day, same pool, same laps and the energy and positivity he brings is really important to our group. 

The moment to remember 

I think the complete domination of UniSport Nationals was fantastic. It is something value as a team and to perform the way we did was a really good thing for us. 

But it is hard to go past the trials where we have had our best outcome in the history of our program. To have a record number of athletes and Chris Mooney selected as a coach on the Dolphins squad, and also the performances of our World Aquatics Swimmers who will be competing for their countries in Singapore, that is very special. 

And there are times you can judge success by actions more than results. At the trials Ben Armbruster missed the qualifying time by 0.03. A lot of swimmers would just take off and go home or get some dinner. He stuck around for his teammates, watched everyone get their Dolphins shirts, took photos at the end, and was there celebrating the other swimmers in the squad successes. I think that's hugely important because Ben's now an Olympian, but he didn't have the lead up he wanted and the preparation he wanted and he missed this team. But to have the maturity to realise it was important to support his teammates, those actions are what we want to see and that was a proud moment for us, and it is also a reflection of how he was brought up and is progressing as a young man as well.

What's clicking 

I think the changes we have made to our coaching structure, with Chris, Zander and myself all coaching open level athletes has opened the door to a little bit more individualisation. Depending on what we're doing on certain days, we may trade swimmers across groups. I think you can get stuck giving everyone the same thing all the time, it is a trap for swimming coaches and swimming programs. I think we've been able to get that balance right by matching personalities with coaches, matching specific needs to coaches. Zander still has the Pathways Group which has been a development group but we have always had a plan for him to retain swimmers who are advancing into a higher level in that group to bolster across the whole program. I started coaching a group again and Chris has still got the Performance Group with our higher categorised swimmers in that. What we are able to deliver better now is specificity - giving athletes what they need at the right time. If you go 12 months and you're training a group of people doing the same thing for all of them at the same time, you're going to get a spread of different reactions or adaptations to the work. We have been able to identify athletes and what they need at certain times. And if for example Chris is coaching something that an athlete from another group needs, they may go with him for a session, or a week.  

A special shoutout  

We have been supported strongly by Queensland Academy of Sport with our lead physiologist, Jason Bartram, who has coordinated the support staff. There's a lot of people that come in - physios, dieticians, we've got biomechanics support and strength conditioning. So, there's a lot of people involved and Jason does a really good job to make sure that the right messages are getting through to the right people. We've got a further investment from them with their staff being able to help our swimmers more, which always ends well for us because that's more eyes on and more individual attention to our athletes. For someone that's employed by another organisation to commit and put in as much time and all the extra things he does, I think he's been a standout and is helping our culture move forward as well.

The focus 

Well our short-term focus has been getting as many people as we can on the World Championship team. But our broader focus had been capitalising off the back of the Olympics and making sure program-wise we're positioned with key staff, key swimmers and the right support network to push on to LA 28. There is a lot of meets and teams that get selected before then and it is important that we get our youth level athletes as much experience on the international stage, so when we get to 2028, they're best equipped to a medal performance on. 

Culture as a constant  

We have really benefitted from regularly playing a roll the dice game. Turning up late, forgetting equipment, leaving rubbish or equipment on the pool deck, leaving water bottles around these sorts of things earn a strike. If an athlete gets three strikes in a three-week period, we roll the dice to determine their sanction. We do this every Wednesday, and it is a bit of fun, but it is also about behaviour correction as well. Athletes might be forced (need) to wear a wig for training for a week, or to bake for the entire squad or make donations to charity. I think that has helped bring everyone together and we did it in partners as well, so athletes were paired up and they had to support each other and hold each other accountable. It is a tough sport, we train a lot more compared to the other tier one sports here at Bond, we have early mornings and late afternoons and being switched on with attitudes and behaviours every single day is a lot more difficult than sports that might train two or three times a week. Something like this reinforces the team spirit in what is largely an individual sport. At the end of the day, your main events are down to just you, so I think anything that has a team aspect to it helps. We're asking our athletes to be quite selfish at times as well with their recovery and how they prepare. And I think little strategies like this have helped the overall culture by providing the opportunity to call people out for things in a respectful way and have like a little bit of a laugh around it too. And we have seen a lot of behaviour shift just through that game, so that was valuable. 

Areas for improvement. 

We’re always trying to do better on recovery and that's not just outside the pool but that's also in the pool. You can swim too hard too often. So utilising technology such as heart rate monitors and lactates to make sure the easy training is easy, and the hard training is hard. We are always on top of the athletes around their massage and physio and taking accountability for their body. At that youth level, sometimes you can get a little bit distracted and just hope something goes away and six months down the track it pops up again, and it's worse. So accountability around keeping their body ready to handle the training and maximise recovery, that will continue to be a focus.

Outside of that I think we've done pretty well racing. I think we get ourselves up for racing and we value training fast. So now it is about bridging that gap between some of the levels in training to racing and a lot of that is psychology and how we approach racing. We've seen some improvements there, but still some way to go as well.

Coaches Corner 

Chris Mooney

“If you reflect just over the last two weeks, that is something that we put together four years ago, so to see it accumulate into those results is reassuring that we selected the right athletes and we've selected the right staff. 

Every person that sits at the table, each profession, knows they can get 4 per cent better out of these athletes and it’s just one of those things where you know that the team that you've assembled is doing their job and the athletes that we've had faith in, and have  had faith in us, are getting a job done. 

And the results last week, I think that's part of us being able to thank everyone that supports us as well, the University, Gina Rinehart and that incredible scholarship we are so lucky to have.

Even though we've got our eye on 2028, I think the big plan is 2032, we don't want to get our asses handed to us in our own country. It is good to know that what we're doing is providing results and that in return helps us with motivation to keep moving forward, and although tit might sound cliché, that is very much a team effort.” 

Kyle Samuelson 

"I have found that we have adapted to change well. There was a little bit more support given to us post Olympics and being able to maximise on that and not let it slip through the fingers has been super important for me as Director of Swimming. It has helped make sure Zander and Chris and myself have what we need on the pool deck to carry out the programs we want. 

I think the other thing that stands out for me is just the as these swimmers are getting older, I think some of the maturity is shifting as well around how they handle their racing, how they handle tough moments."

Zander Hey  

“At our end of season presentation last year I predicted that this would be one of the best national opens that we would ever have because of the force of our open team. All our swimmers are graduating into that open category, we only had four or five athletes going to National Age championships and they all doubled up and swam at Opens. I cannot think of another program that can retain the athletes that we do, and that's only being achieved because we have three distinctive groups that cater to three different types of athletes. The progression from Nationals through UniSport games and then into trials was this unbelievable dropping of times across the entire program. And I have to mention Lani Connolly, she's just an unbelievable athlete. She's so tuned into her tasks, she never presents with injuries because she manages her health so well and it is just a beauty to coach an athlete like that. The block of training we did from January to April was intense and you don’t see a lot of female breaststrokers see go through a big block like that because they typically don't survive under a lot of freestyle volume. But Lani's just got this motor and technique across at least three strokes. I don't even think we've seen what she's capable in other disciplines.”