SCHOOL: A boy with swimming as a passion
He trains six days a week for two hours every day .
Jonathan Scheffer is a grade 6 Maragon Private School Olympus pupil who has been swimming from the age of eight. He swims at Pretoria Aquatic Club (PAC) with one of South Africa’s top coaches Eugene da Ponte, who also coaches the Maragon Mooikloof swimming team.
Jonathan is absolutely passionate about swimming and even after training would go home and jump into the swimming pool! He is 100% committed to his swimming and only misses a training session if he is very ill. He has sacrificed a lot of weekends and birthday parties for his swimming. He trains six days a week for two hours every day including winter in an outdoor heated swimming pool.
His swimming hero is Chad le Clos. He has carried his passion for swimming into his school work; whenever he needs to say a speech or write a book report for school the teachers already know it is going to be about Chad or swimming! He has done two science expos about swimming and won a silver last year at the South African Junior Science expo for his science expo and has once again qualified to represent his school at the Gauteng Junior Science Expo.
The school has been very supportive of his swimming career and Jonathan has willingly and unwillingly taught teachers and pupils all about the world of competitive swimming. Some of his highlights over the past year has been NTS Championships in December where he won 7 medals and was placed as the 3rd top performer in his age group. He was then selected for the NTS Invitational gala to swim against other provinces where he won a medal again.
He participated in the Gauteng school’s gala winning two medals. He swam at the South African National Junior championships (SANJ) in March and the TYR Prestige gala where he made two finals coming 5th and sixth out of 60 boys from South Africa and neighbouring countries.
He swam the NTS Short Course Championship on the 28th August and won a gold medal and a bronze medal as well as swimming a qualifying SANJ u/13 time. He also qualified to represent NTS at the Gauteng Short Course championship where won a gold medal in 50 meters backstroke, silver in 50-meter butterfly and 2 bronze medals in 100m backstroke and 200m backstroke. In the top season times for all the South African competitive swimmers, he was placed 15/418 boys for 50m backstroke, 13/315 boys for 100m backstroke and 8/201 boys for the 200m backstroke.
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