Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

First of all, I want to wish Mary Hewitt, who turned a remarkable 100 years young on 16 June, a very happy birthday. I want to talk about Local Sporting Champions grants recipients in my electorate. Leo Viitala started playing basketball when he was just 10 and in almost six years he has achieved his goal of representing Victorian country at the national level. The road for Leo to complete in the under-18 national comp in Tasmania in April involved two try-out and selection competitions and a final selection camp. Leo not only plays for a local club in the Seymour Basketball Association but plays for his school team at Assumption College, the country basketball league Seymour team and the Golden Valley Eagles up to the state championship level. He has been involved with Basketball Country Victoria's IAP program, receiving the athlete of the year award last year.

Hayden Gardner this summer competed in the under-18 national youth baseball championships, representing Baseball Victoria. This is the culmination of being selected for Victorian state junior teams for the last five years. That is a great achievement for any sportsman. Angus Wiseman, at 15 years old, is already representing Victoria in junior athletics. In March this year, he went to the Australian Junior Athletics Championships at Homebush in Sydney, at the 2000 Olympics Stadium. Angus's passion is for the triple jump and he hopes to one day represent Australia at that event. He is working a casual job on top of school and athletics to fund his way. I hope that the cheque helps him fund a little bit of the costs involved in competing at the elite level.

Jessica Adams has already reached her goal of many years to attend the age championships, as well as qualifying for nine individual events this year in swimming. She was named Swimming Victoria's age champion for 2011 and again in 2012. She holds a Swimming Victoria butterfly record and 23 northern metro records. Jess has also been awarded a Leader Newspapers sports award for her three gold and four silvers at the 2011 championships. At such a young age, she has achieved a lot and this grant is a well-deserved recognition of that.

Another Jess, Jessica Tatarskyj, swims with the Epping Aquajets and has been in swimming training and competition since aged seven. Jess's dream is to one day represent Australia in swimming and she knows that realising that dream means a lot of hard work. The recognition and support of the Local Sporting Champions grants acknowledges all those 5 am training starts and the sacrifices that her mum has made towards that goal. Jess gained nine qualifying times across all strokes and distances to be able to attend the Australian Age Championships. She was recently named the Swimming Victoria State Age Champion with six gold, three silver and one bronze medal at the state championships. Jess said that one of her reasons in nominating for a Local Sporting Champions grant was her wish to help mum out with the costs of training and competing. I want to put on the record that when these guys all become Olympic champions that I recognised them first.