While waiting to chat with young Millie Edwards Bradshaw, I glance upwards and spot her name twice on the Macksville Public School honour board for 'sportsperson of the year'.
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The school is incredibly proud of her achievements ... and with good reason.
The 12-year-old superfish has just recently returned from her third straight SchoolSport Australia Swimming Championships where she competed in three different strokes over six events, and medalled twice.
Mille was also selected as the NSW team's Vice Captain, to cap off an amazing year of accomplishments.
"I was thrilled. It's a big thing getting chosen as one of the captains for the team," she said.
Even though she's no stranger to national-level competition and has trained every day all year for this, Millie said she was still a wreck before she dived into the water for her first event.
"I felt sick I was so nervous," she said.
"But after I got into the water I was like, 'ok I can do this, I'm not going to die'.
I just went into my own little world and concentrated on my stroke. I tried my hardest in every event so that all the training I did before wasn't just a waste of time.
To say she did well is really a bit of an undersell; Millie clocked personal bests in each of her events.
In fact, she shaved two seconds off her previous best time in the 100m butterfly heat, then a further second in the final, clocking in at 1:07.61 - a time which placed her third in all of Australia.
"After my race my legs felt like they were going to fall off they were shaking so much," she said.
But she managed to climb the dais for her bronze medal and jump off just in time to catch her 50m backstroke heat.
She missed out on a second individual medal in the backstroke by only three milliseconds.
To we mere mortals, ranking fourth in the entire country would be a dream come true. But Millie is a girl who eats spoonfuls of determination for breakfast.
She more than made up for the "very frustrating" near miss in the individual backstroke with a silver medal-winning performance in the backstroke leg of her team's 4 x 50m medley relay.
Needless to say her Mum and Aunt who were in attendance were ecstatic with her result, as were Dean Lawrence (Millie's coach) and James Weiner (her personal trainer) who routinely checked in over the course of the three days down in Melbourne.
With the highest level of competition behind her for the year Millie can now start to look to the future.
"I just want to keep improving, but I haven't really thought that far ahead yet," she said. "I guess one goal is to prepare for longer distances - I'd like to do the 200m butterfly, and then start the 400m individual medley.
"And it would definitely be pretty cool to go to the Olympics one day."
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Mel Leigh Dee
Mel is a journalist at the Guardian News and is based in Macksville.
Mel is a journalist at the Guardian News and is based in Macksville.
