They say every cloud has a silver lining, but in the case of 16-year-old Keri-Leigh Shaw she is a star with a silver lining.

The young Keri-Leigh brought home two silver medals she won during the FINA (Federation Internationalé de Natation Amateur) World Youth Swimming Championships in Rio de Janeiro from August 22 to 27. Although she is studying and training at the High-Performance Centre in Pretoria, Keri-Leigh joins an impressive list of “home-brewed” sport stars hailing from Makhado (Louis Trichardt). Her name is right up there with that of Mbulaeni Mulaudzi, Marli Knoetze and Janus Robberts.

As part of the junior South African team, Keri-Leigh kept the country in contention by winning a silver medal in the 100m butterfly, an event she specializes in. Her time of 1:00:25 was also a personal best and a national age group record. Keri-Leigh and team-mates Karin Prinsloo, Yolana du Plessis and Christy Lategan then went on to secure South Africa a silver medal in the 4 x 100m medley relay.

Returning home for a short break on Tuesday this week, a visibly exhausted Keri-Leigh still made the time to visit the office of the Zoutpansberger.

“I was happy about my silver medal, but I wanted better. I was aiming for a better time,” said Keri-Leigh. Her drive to always aim higher and to improve herself says a lot about this talented young star and South Africa is sure to see and hear a lot more of her.

It is, however, hard work. Despite an intensive training programme, the FINA Championships were no picnic. Keri-Leigh swam every day with heats at night and finals in the morning in different events. Only the top eight who qualified during the heats competed in the finals the next day.

“This was very exhausting. The heats went on until 22:00 with swimmers having to swim the finals at 07:30 the next day. This does not give you much time to rest and is different from South Africa, where you swim heats in the morning and finals in the evening,” said Keri-Leigh.

The FINA Junior Swimming Championships are the first ever event hosted for swimmers under the age of 17. Normally, junior and senior swimmers compete together. South Africa finished third overall during the event out of 72 countries with regard to points scored for qualifying for the finals. On the medals table, South Africa came 17th.

As for Keri-Leigh, she will stay home for a couple of days with parents Jean and Mike Shaw before returning to Pretoria on Sunday. She will then start training for the South African Short-Course Championships in two weeks’ time as a build-up to the national trials in December for the South African senior team to compete at the World Championships in Melbourne, Australia, next year.