By Tania Phillips
There’s something in the water out at Allora with the town set to produce yet another star athlete – this time in the pool (though he has been known to compete in discus events too)
Bailey Harm, 16, has been awarded a Hancock Prospecting Patron Scholarship to support his training and competition endeavours.
Harm is one of 18 emerging swimmers aged 13-18 throughout Qld to be awarded the scholarship through Queensland swimming.
The program aims to foster and develop the next generation of champion swimmers.
The announcement comes hot on the heels of an impressive 2024 swimming season for the Allora local.
The talented swimmer has just returned with a haul of medals from the first School Sports Australia Games 01 incorporating School Sports Australia National Swimming Championships.
“It was the first multi-games event held on the Gold Coast,” Harm’s mother Donna-Maree Willett said.
“It included a whole heap of National championships for swimming, AFL, basketball, netball and maybe one other that I don’t remember.
“They held it all across the Coast, out at Carrara, the pool at Southport. It was good, it was a big multi-sports week-long event. It was a new concept to bring it all together and they brought in Fiji and the Cook Islands as well.”
And it turns out it was a great meet for Harm who had five individual events and five relay events.
“He won gold in the 16-years 100m freestyle, silver in 16 years 50 freestyle, bronze in the 16 years 50 back and breaststroke and fourth in the 16 years 50 fly,” Willett said.
“The he swam five relays. In the 15-16 mixed medley relay he was the anchor swimmer, swimming the freestyle in a time of 22.76m which is awesome for 16. Then he anchored the Qld boys medley winning silver, he also anchored the 16 years boys freestyle and they were silver as well. He anchored the 13-19 years 4x100m freestyle and they came third and then he was part of the mixed all-age relay who came second.
“So he got nine medals from 10 swims. His 100m free time in the final was 52.63.
“He’s been swimming up here at Allora with Andrew Fidge since he was three. He only ever swam in summer and in winter he does athletics but over the past two years he’s started training with Troy Chandler in Toowoomba at Concordia. This feels like we’ve been swimming constantly for the past 12 months. He went to a joint swimming Queensland/Swimming Brisbane camp called the BrisVegas camp over the winter school holidays which was awesome. He’s part of swimming Qld talent identification group and development squads.”
After such a busy year, Harm had been due to swim in the Qld Short Course titles in Brisbane over the weekend before taking a bit of a few weeks break. However, he was forced to pull out of the Short Course titles due to a bout of Bronchitis.
While he’s on his break though he will turn to his other love.
“He loves athletics, he loves the discus and highjump and he’ll go through to the State trials for them,” his mother said.
“He’s said if he decides to quit swimming he might just concentrate on discus which would be quite funny being an Allora kid,” she laughed.
