Wauchope has an outstanding swimming champion. Morgan Jean is just 15 years old and he recently won gold and silver medals at the Pacific School Games in Adelaide.
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Organised by School Sport Australia in partnership with the South Australia Tourism Commission, the games are the world’s best multi-sport school competition for Australian and international students.
Morgan is in Year 8 at Westport High School in Port Macquarie, and lives in Byabarra. Just making it to the Games is a huge accomplishment in itself. It was his first international event. His classification is S14, which is intellectual disability.
He had five events; the first was 200m medley relay multi-class, where he came second, and set a personal best of 27 seconds. His second event was the 100m breaststroke multi-class and he came fourth; for his 50m butterfly, he came fourth; for his 50m freestyle he came first, and in his last event, a 4x50m relay, they came fourth.
His mother, Tania Jean said the hard thing with Morgan is that because he swims multi-class, he can come first in the pool and has touched the wall first, and when everything gets scaled for disability, instead of coming in that first place, he might come fourth.
“One of Morgan’s most outstanding features is how gracious he is. He just says: ‘You know what? They had to swim harder than me.’ Morgan started swimming and liking it when he was 10 years old.
“It’s something he’s had to work hard at. Once he masters a movement, he’s fine. It’s the whole getting your head in the space, and mastering the different elements of the movement that make it more complex.
“He doesn’t find things easy but he does stick with it. He trains every day, whether it’s in the pool, or doing athletics. He does a lot of sport.
“At school, he’s part of the sports academy and he loves that. Morgan’s coach, Larry Brooks, has been phenomenal breaking down and building up skills,” she said.
Morgan says swimming is his favourite sport, although he enjoys soccer except for the injuries. As well as being the current North Coast swimming champion, Morgan has been awarded a North Coast recognition award for his swimming.