'Environment' lures top swimmer

When Southland’s top female swimmer, Joyce Wiegersma, had to decide on her future in the sport and where that future would be, she chose her home province.
While many of her peers have had to travel for tertiary education coupled with high performance training, Joyce has had her cake and been able to eat it, too.
With one of the best swimming pools in the country and the support to back it up in Invercargill, she did not have much trouble deciding to stay and is studying primary school teaching at the Dunedin College of Education’s Southland campus.
Joyce is confident her decision to stay in the south to study and to train at Splash Palace under the watchful eye of Coach Jeremy Duncan is the right one.
“The environment that we can create down here can match (or) better those offered at high performance centers throughout New Zealand by utilizing resources and experience within the Southland community,” Jeremy said.
“I think this will set a precedent for senior high performance athletes to peruse excellence in their chosen discipline here in Southland.”
Thanks to the Invercargill Licensing Trust and a thriving swimming scene, Swim Southland has been able to hire top coaches to keep its high performance athletes.
The result of the programme, which is focusing on excellence, is several promising swimmers including Joyce.
Her success has taken her all over New Zealand and also to Australia, competing for her province and her nation.
Joyce started swimming at 10 and has gone from strength to strength.
She is now the holder of 18 Southland records including a clean sweep of the open women’s freestyle; she has represented New Zealand in the Trans Tasman tri-series and swum at the youth Olympics in 2005.
With seven years of competition under her belt, she trains 10 times a week and still finds time to study.
”Weekends (I) get a lot done, so things balance quite well,” she said.
Keeping a clear head and staying motivated has been a key to her success.
Getting to the level she is at takes a lot of support and, her parents, Joka and Arnold, have played a vital role, along with the Waverly Swim Club, the ILT, the Community Trust of Southland, Swim Southland and Mr Duncan.
Joyce is “unique, quite a perfectionist (and) she works for her results,” team-mate Jared Sandri said.
With national youth open champs at Easter, Joyce is entering a high quality phase in her training and has been putting in some outstanding efforts.
The Easter meet also doubles as a qualifying opportunity for the Oceania champs in July and she has set this as one of her goals.
Beyond that she has set her sights firmly on competing in the Youth Olympics in Hawaii at the end of the year with a major focus towards the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Joyce will finish her degree in 2008 and after that hopes to give something back to the sport by being a club coach, as well as teaching.
Joyce has been keeping good company in her drive for success with younger sister Natalie and top ranked age group swimmers, Jared Sandri and Carrie Smith following her up the ranks.