Ebenezer 11-year-old breaks NSW swim records, scoops multiple Gold medals

There’s a cliché in sports journalism – actually there’s more than one – but this particular one always starts, ‘remember this name’ the idea being the person named is going on to much greater glories.

Well, this time the cliché is spot on.

You need to remember this name, because this young man is going places.

Meet Noah Kemp who has been swimming pretty much since his dad Michael 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.

He also 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.”

Mr Kemp was a strong swimmer back in the day and both he and his elder 29-year-old son Anthony picked up State titles too.

Noah swims and trains at Windsor Swim Club where he has learnt much, but the tuition his dad gives him certainly seems to be working too.

“I could see it in him in his first comp when he was eight.

“He just looked different to everyone else and even though he came last in that competition I could see something in him then that I could work with.”

“He is very long limbed and has a long torso and that floating point that you get from that just helps him sit on top of the water,” says Michael.

“At the last NSW championships in May, this is when he really started to shine. He got six gold medals there and that was unexpected really and he really did well and from there he just got better and better.”

This coming weekend Noah competes at the NSW Short Course Championships and is expected to do well there too.

“I just followed swimming and have loved swimming all my life,” says Mr Kemp, “I’ve just really been a stickler for the technique and getting that right and that’s what’s made the difference. I think, for Noah.”

The training isn’t all in the pool, Noah also does a lot of land training.

That means a fair amount of running and body weight exercises, push-ups and pull ups.

It’s not all training though. Noah says he enjoys mixing socially with all the other competitors, and in his down time he draws, listens to music and just relaxes.

“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 level-headed 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 Kemp.

As we said at the beginning, remember this name.

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