Gala’s Amy Owenson still in the swim but now seeing bigger picture
The route to the top in any sport is never straight and often it can veer off in different directions along the way.
Over recent weeks, we have been highlighting youngsters being helped out by Scottish Borders Council’s athlete support programme.
They have come from all kinds of backgrounds and taken part in sports from mountain-biking to netball, hill-running to sprinting and bowling to shooting and many others besides, offering an insight into the diversity of sporting participation and achievement across the region.
What happens when life intervenes, though, and prompts a rethink?
For one Galashiels teenager, going to university forced her to make a decision over whether to continue a life of 5am starts or take a breather. She chose the latter option and now she is delighted that she did.
Amy Owenson will turn 19 in a few weeks’ time and move into a flat with friends made in her first year at Stirling University studying sport and exercise science.
Owenson has been a member of Gala Amateur Swimming Club since the age of eight and part of the Borders Elite Swim Team, known as Best for short, since she was 12.
From the moment she left her home-town’s St Peter’s Primary for Galashiels Academy, she embarked on six years of 5am alarms and two hours of swimming at Selkirk pool before heading into school, followed by evening swims and gym circuits – eight or so sessions a week – as well as swims for her club.
She says she loved every minute as her Gala coaches Jenny Goodfellow, Robyn Methven and latterly Steve Powell and Best’s Kirsty Armstrong oversaw her development into one of the east district’s top swimmers.
She capped a series of ever-improving performances in 2025 by winning the 50m breaststroke title and taking bronze for 100m at her sport’s Scottish summer meet.
At that point, some might have imagined Owenson pushing on for Commonwealth Games selection but she decided to take a different route.
“I had to weigh up what I did after school, and going to university was something I really wanted to do,” she explained.
“I was delighted to win the Scottish 50m last year, after coming second and fourth in the years before, but I think I saw that as more of a reward for everything I’d put into my swimming over the years, rather than a platform to push on from to the next level.
“I got a place at Stirling, which meant I could push to be part of the high-performance squad here – or not.
“I chose instead to have a bit of a breather, have a bit of time for myself and throwing myself into uni life.”
That bit of a breather is actually all relative, and far from turning into a couch potato, she still does pool training three times a week with her university’s swimming team, a gym session and extra swims by herself.
“It is a huge difference for me,” said Owenson. “The high-performance team have eight sessions at least in a week, whereas we have three – and I no longer have the 5am alarm calls. That’s probably the biggest change and I am loving that.
“Uni swimmers are still competing with the high-performance guys in competitions – I did that at the Edinburgh international meet in March – so that opportunity is still there, but there isn’t the pressure now.
“I’ve really enjoyed going to university, making new friends and doing things that don’t revolve around swimming timetables. I think I needed that.”
The biggest indication of that spreading of wings outwith her sporting cocoon of the past decade may be that none of Owenson’s new flatmates are swimmers.
She has been supported by the Borders’ athlete support programme to help her to achieve her potential physically and mentally, but a key part of that was work with sports psychologist Brad Fullarton to help her to see the bigger picture.
Her mother Lucy, nee Henderson, was a hockey player in her teens, representing the South and Scotland at age-grade levels, and her father Paul was a footballer with Gala Fairydean Rovers, so sport was always going to be part of life for Owenson and her brother Alex, also a player for Fairydean, but they all see it as being about more than medals or podium places and regard enjoyment as being what it’s all about.
She reckons sport has given her much to be grateful for, listing friendships, discipline and self-belief as benefits that have helped her settle into university life.
“Swimming has been great for me in so many ways, but it’s not everything in life and it’s important, I think, to acknowledge that,” she said.
“I don’t know what the future holds. I know that the Commonwealth Games and Olympics are probably out of reach now, if they were ever a possibility, but I would love to have a career in sport and that’s what I’m starting to think about.
“I look back on my sport fondly and I’ll always enjoy swimming, but I am really looking forward now to what comes next.”