Libby Trickett visit for Year 8 and 9 Students

Year 8 and 9 Shalom College students were treated to a visit from Australian swimmer Libby Trickett, who among many accolades has 24 gold medals across Olympic, Commonwealth Games and world championship events.

For student Elise Maslen, meeting Trickett was an amazing, encouraging, inspiring and motivational experience.

“Libby was very sweet and a down to earth person her pride and joy showed greatly when talking about her achievements in the past Olympics and the Commonwealth Games, which was a great aspect of her that I think impressed and encouraged all to pursue their love in sports,” Maslen said.

“The key message that really stuck with me is the phrase that she used when she was nervous or anxious when she was about to race and wanted to calm down ‘I’m strong, I’m fit, I’m healthy. Therefore, I’m fast.’.

“She made this phrase with her coach to help her calm down and just focus on the race and not think about what can go wrong.

“This key message stuck with me because I usually find myself stressing about the things that can go wrong and the things that I could do incorrectly, this has shown me that I’m just overthinking and need to relax.”

Throughout the presentation, Maslen said there were a couple of things that surprised her, one of which was the medal.

She said the weight and size of the Olympic gold medal really shocked her.

“Another thing that shocked me was how many physical healthy challenges she went through. This showed me that anything can be done when there’s enough effort put in,” Maslen said.

For Ethan Giles, it was exciting to have a world and Olympic champion come and talk to them and show one of her gold medals.

“It was interesting to hear her stories about her swimming success and that she is has had multiple jobs since retiring from swimming,” Giles said.

One of the key messages he gained was to play as many sports as you can for as long as you can and not stick to one sport from the beginning.

A surprising aspect of the presentation for Giles was that Trickett didn’t really focus on swimming until she was 17, and that she got to race a relay against Michael Phelps and get an unofficial world record.

Thanks to Mikayla Haupt from Bundaberg Today 

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