Logan swimmers have claimed five gold medals and a bronze at the Commonwealth Games, with more races to swim.
Mollie O’Callaghan, 22, Shayna Jack, 27, and her brother Jamie Jack, 23, trained with the Greenbank Gators Swimming Club as juniors.
At the time of print, O’Callaghan, had claimed two gold medals; in the women’s 200m freestyle and the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay.
Shayna Jack also had two gold medals; in the the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay and the mixed 4x100m freestyle relay.
In his Commonwealth Games debut, Jamie Jack claimed gold in the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay for his swim in the heat before claiming bronze in the mens 50m freestyle early on Tuesday morning. He is in contention to swim in the relay events.
Logan City Council Division 11 councillor Natalie Willcocks, whose area includes Greenbank said all of Greenbank and Logan were wishing the athletes well.
“We can’t wait to get behind you to cheer you on,” Cr Willcocks said.
The trio discovered the pulse of competition in Greenbank State School’s 25-metre pool, tucked into bushland near Oxley Creek.
O’Callaghan began her swimming career there, while the Jacks first raced there.
They reach Glasgow at opposite turns in two golden careers.
In a social-media statement, O’Callaghan said she was cleared to race despite a shoulder injury, stress fractures and bone oedema in her lower spine—injuries that threatened to sink her games campaign before it began.
She is entered in the 50m backstroke and 100m freestyle, with relays possible.
For Shayna Jack, Glasgow is a farewell.
The dual Olympic gold medallist will contest the 50m and 100m freestyle before closing a career that carried her from Greenbank to the sport’s highest podiums.
The swimmers’ paths converged at St Peters Western and in Australian relay teams that won Olympic gold and set world records.
Both have since returned to meet young Greenbank Gators swimmers, the next generation in the volunteer-run club proudly guarding that tradition.
And that tradition runs deep.
Locals completed Greenbank’s first school using volunteer labour in 1893.
More than a century later, they rallied around O’Callaghan when she was just a 10-year-old Greenbank swimmer with a national dream.
As a student at Greenbank State School , she had qualified for the 2014 Australian Schools Championships in Melbourne, but the trip was expected to cost her family about $5000.
Collection boxes appeared at Coffee Club stores in Jimboomba and Browns Plains. Swimming Queensland later reported the support helped buy her first Queensland tracksuit and a proper racing gear.
The club names have changed. The champions have travelled from a small Logan pool to the world’s biggest swimming lanes.
But beneath the Glasgow lights, every stroke still carries a faint ripple from Oxley Creek—and a community that has always known how to lift its own.
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