Swimming Australia’s Next Wave program to prepare emerging athletes and developing coaches

Swimming Australia is revising the Trans-Tasman Series - a feature of the early 2000s - as the Next Wave Invitational Competition Camp to be held in Canberra from 6th-12th July.

Selected following the recent Australian Age Championships, 64 promising age athletes – males and females born 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and females born 2012 – will compete at Next Wave and gain team and racing experiences at the Australian Institute of Sport.

The invited athletes will compete as two teams, the Kangaroos and Emus, and 14 coaches, five managers and performance staff will also be selected as part of Swimming Australia’s strategic development towards 2032.

Former Australian head coach and National Team Support Coach Leigh Nugent advised “Next Wave will provide meaningful experiences to our athletes and coaches prior to international exposure. It’s something that’s been missing for the past 10 years or so and it’s great to have it back on the national roster.

“Similar to the Trans-Tasman series, Next Wave is set up to help prepare emerging athletes as well as developing coaches (and those within the high performance system) for when they make their benchmark Australian team by facilitating intensive competition environment.

“With consistent back-to-back racing, athletes will race multiple times to learn how to handle fatigue, maintain consistency in their performance and quickly improve on their learnings from one meet to the next.

The purpose of the Swimming Australia Next Wave Invitational Competition Camp is to bring together the best performing age swimmers in the country to gain team and racing experience prior to potential selection on the junior benchmark team.

Swimming Australia’s rationale for the competition camp is due to the isolation of Australia globally it is important that the best young athletes, their coaches, identified managers and support staff are brought together to assist in their learnings.

This Camp will create the understanding of national representation, team function, being an effective team member, culture learning and team performance. It will also introduce the National relay program including education around relay changeover skills. An important component of the Camp is for coaches and athletes to learn from competition racing, hence the repetition of the program three times so we can carry the learnings and implement them multiple times in the week.

Image. Archie Kreutzberger and Lillie McPherson Credit: Rebecca Ohlwein/Swimming Australia. Kreutzberger and McPherson are among the 17 NSW swimmers selected to take part in Swimming Australia’s Next Wave Invitational Competition Camp, to be held in Canberra from 6th–12th July 2025.