Star aims for higher rank

Busselton swimmer Maddison Johnston-Walker has been named the Busselton Freight Service rising sports star for May.

Maddison dived into competitive swimming at the age of nine before taking on series competitions in Perth at 11.

“I started with the club after my first school swimming carnival,” she said.

“I did OK and decided I wanted to swim for a sport.”

Dedicating most of her time to swimming, the teenager traded basketball, soccer and surf lifesaving for eight training sessions a week — including two dry-land sessions and one pilates session.

She started out swimming breaststroke, before the 14-year-old took a liking to butterfly.

Maddison competed at a national level at the Australian Age Championships in Brisbane in April, where she competed in the girls’ 14 years 100m butterfly and qualified for finals.

“The heat seemed a lot more scary to me because I really wanted to make the finals,” she said.

“Making the finals exceeded my expectations, so I was quite relaxed but it was still scary competing against those girls.

“I trained really hard to get a qualifying time, so getting to finals was really cool.

The St Mary MacKillop College student said she was focused on improving her time and she hoped to be selected for the short course WA State team in September. “I want to improve my ranking at nationals,” she said.

“I took a pretty big leap at rankings this year, so I want to keep improving.”

Chloe Fraser