While South Africa’s best swimming coach, Rocco Meiring of TuksSwimming, produces one world star after another, it seems that the end of the champions on his conveyor belt is far from in sight.

One of Meiring’s young protégés, 15-year-old Hanna Mouton, has been selected as part of the junior SA team that will soon compete in the FINA World Junior Swimming Championships 2022 in Lima, Peru.

Mouton, who already showed promise as a future champion swimmer at a very young age, will represent South Africa at this championship in the 200m and 400m freestyle events.

This lithe teenager’s father, Chad, is a provincial golfer who wanted his daughter to also excel on the golf course and he exposed her to the sport early on. However, she participated in her first swimming gala as a little girl at the St Paulus Primary School in the East of Pretoria and did so well, that experts immediately realized this kind of talent needs to be developed..

Suddenly swimming became a big part of her life and it was during a gala she participated in as a member of the Diadora Aquatics Swimming Club that Meiring spotted her two years later.

The rest is history. Mouton began to collect handfuls of medals at swimming competitions and before long she also received a scholarship to join the Tuks High Performance Sports School.

Then came Covid and things changed everywhere. Mouton has also changed her approach and these days she is on a home school program to pay more attention to her swimming career.

Last year, Mouton competed against the seniors at regional level and collected several medals, especially in the freestyle event, which is her favourite. She won gold in the 200m and 400m races and silver in die 50m freestyle event.

Unlike her clubmates at TuksSwimming such as Tatjana Schoenmaker and Kaylene Corbett, Mouton admits she not a very keen breaststroke swimmer. But with any of the other strokes, especially freestyle, she is like a fish in water.

She has also been honoured several times by the provincial union, Northern Tigers Swimming. Last season she was named victrix ludorum at the Northern Tigers’ annual gala.

Now she is on her way to international participation for the first time and that excites her. This will be the first time that Mouton will participate in the green and gold of SA.

Mouton is a huge South African patriot and would like to stay in the country. That is why she has already decided to return to Tuks after school, where she wants to study psychology.

Her long-term plans include participating in the Olympic Games in 2024, but she admits it’s still too early in her career to have realistic medal dreams at that level.

But if Mouton has her way, Paris 2024 will be used to learn and perhaps establish herself among the top 20 in the world. Then she will target the 2028 Olympics to try and win medals.

For now, though, her focus is on Peru at the end of the month. And at this event she definitely dreams of a place on the podium and a medal around her neck to make her compatriots and her family proud.

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