Swimming: Alex Hayes excited for opportunity to compete at Australian Swimming Championships

A month after achieving three top 15 finishes at the Australian Age Championships, the breaststroker will on Tuesday head back down to Adelaide, this time to compete at the opens nationals.

Qualifying for the 50m, 100m and 200m breaststroke, the 17-year old is the club's first nationals representative in more than 50 years.

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"I'm really excited, I'm feeling relaxed about it which is nice, not putting too much expectation or pressure on myself," Hayes said.

Her first time competing at the opens nationals, it is really just about the experience. She's not focusing on times or anything like that.

Doubling as the trials for the World Championships and Birmingham Commonwealth Games teams, it will be stars everywhere you turn.

"I'm excited to go and see what I can do and racing alongside them will be a massive experience and achievement," Hayes said of competing against what are some of her idols.

She has had to play a bit of catch-up with the 360 pool closed for about a week when she returned from the age nationals, but feels like she has started to get that endurance back. It can be "lost pretty quickly", she said.

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One of the biggest positives from the age championships was her "consistency", especially in her 200.

Along with building her endurance back up, maintaining that has been one of the things she has really been working on with coach Nicholas Monet in the time they have had in the water.

"We've really come back here and just tried to improve on that and keep going with that; consistent stroke rate, consistent timing and just being able to hold that over the 200," she said.

Hayes has loved being in the water from even before she started swimming competitively when she was nine. She was an early bloomer, medalling at the Pacific School Games the following year, and has consistently been among the top swimmers for her age since.

"I just love the feeling of really efficiently going through the water," she said.

It hasn't though always been easy to maintain the motivation to chase that 'black line' up and down.

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"It's definitely been difficult over the last two years mentally (with COVID) and not really improving my times, especially in the 200m," Hayes reflected.

"I started to see a sport psychologist, which has really helped me with the mental aspect of it by focusing on the process, not the outcome, not the times, which has really helped me engage in training a lot more."

Monet has also been a huge support.

She starts her program on Wednesday with the 100m.

The 50 is on Thursday and the 200 on Friday.

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