Ebenezer 11-year-old Breaks NSW Swim Records
Meet Noah Kemp who has been swimming pretty much since his dad Michael Ebenezer first introduced the nipper to the pool at the tender age of just three months.
Noah has just blitzed the state School Sport Australian Swimming Championships held at Chandler Aquatic Centre at Brisbane last week over three days and he’s forged new NSW record times.
Not only new records, he literally scooped the pool of gold medals. In Brisbane he entered seven events and won seven gold medals.
He’s only 11, is an Ebenezer PS student – the sixth generation of Kemps to go to the school, as it happens – and on Monday, a special celebration was held by a proud school, pupils and parents, with MP Susan Templeman sending through her congratulations too.
Here’s Noah’s formidable list of achievements from the weekend.
• GOLD 50m Freestyle (NSW Record)
• GOLD 50m Butterfly (NSW record)
• GOLD 100m Butterfly (NSW Record)
• GOLD 50m Backstroke ((NSW record)
• GOLD 100m Backstroke (NSW record)
• And as a team member:
• Gold in 4x50m Medley Relay
• Gold in 4x50m Freestyle Relay
He was also awarded Male Swimmer of the Championships at the closing ceremony. And he holds the NSW records in Short Course swimming for –
• 50m Freestyle
• 50m Butterfly
• 50m Backstroke
• 100m Backstroke
Noah’s name now sits alongside the young Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett’s records when they were his age, so you know something special is going on here.
Noah’s dad, Michael, told the Post his son has been competing since he was 9, started swimming seriously from the age of 7, and from 10 onwards he was reeling in the records.
“He has gone very quickly from district to regional to State,” says Mr Kemp.
He says he and his wife, Emma, are “very, very proud.” “If he makes leaps and bounds in the next couple of years,” Michael says, “you never know where he could get. He is pretty focussed on it and he is just making that big a leaps and bounds, who knows what he could do.”
For one so young, Noah is clearly levelheaded and confident, not at all arrogant, and with a good degree of humility, but he is certainly focussed.
“Honestly I couldn’t really picture it for a while and it’s only just coming to me that it’s happening,” he told us. And how does he think he’ll do in this weekend’s State Short Course Championships?
“Obviously I’m nervous but I’m going to try and give it my best shot. I think I’ve got eight individual events.” But he’s also looking ahead – quite a way ahead… “I have just been figuring what ages I’ll be at the next two Olympics. I probably wouldn’t make 2028 but there’s 2032 in Brisbane,” says Noah.
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