Ambassadors
Hiya, my name is Siobhan Terry and I am a competitive para swimmer. I was born in Rotorua in 2000, moved to Australia in 2002, returning back to Rotorua 2014 for school and family.
I was born with a clubfoot which, has meant that I have had to learn some things differently to others.
All throughout my schooling I have participated in every event such as cross country, athletics and swimming.
When I was in primary school I placed in the top four for cross country with the next two years competing in the inter schools athletics. Around the time, I also competed in school swimming sports or attended swimming lessons. On swimming sports days I would constantly place first or second in every race. However, having to go through operations, which meant casts, swimming was more of an on off thing - that I did whenever possible.
A couple of years passed after kinda falling out of swimming and cross country I moved back to Rotorua. In 2015, I started getting back into cross country more competitively.
In June 2016, I competed in the NZ secondary schools cross country and placed first in a para classified race. This was my first event I had competed in as a para athlete. However, I began obtaining injuries to my leg and had to stop cross country.
After talking with my mum about it for a long time, I got back into my swimming at the end of 2016.
At first it was just training, training, training but only eight months after starting, I qualified for my first long course nationals. I began with small competitions and then short course national’s months later.
To date, I have competed in 8 swimming competitions. All competitions ranging from big to small, getting personal bests, gaining experience and winning some medals.
For the near future, I am training towards nationals in July with my first national development camp run by Paralympics NZ and Halberg Disability Games in Oct and lots more training!
I hope from my training, I wish to one day make it further and aim for the Paralympics or Commonwealth Games.
