James Baldwin won his place in this year's Rotorua Young Achievers series for his excellence in leadership, academic performance and sport.

The 18-year-old Year 13 student is a Prefect and Head of Drake House at Rotorua Boys' High School and next year will study first year Health Science at Otago University.

His sport of choice is swimming, where he has made his mark at both regional and national levels.

He first dived into the pool with Swim Rotorua when he was 11 and has broken more than 10 Bay of Plenty age group records.

Nationally, he has won medals at New Zealand Short Course Championships, the New Zealand Secondary School Championships and Open Water Championships.

Swimming as fast as he can in the 50m/100m freestyle sprint events is what James loves to do.

It's like the 100m sprint on the track with complete mastery of physical and mental challenges needed in just a few seconds. There is no time to recover from a poor start, a mis-stroke or timing issue.

Swimming sprints is not for the faint of heart, but suits James who loves how training can replicate performance better than most sports.

'When you do a race, you can pinpoint exactly where you need to improve. That makes goal setting way easier cause it is not a vague ‘I want to go faster'. You know what you have to do exactly,” says James.

'So when you are training you can pretend you are in the race and push through. The key is to do every training like you want to race.”

James has been coached by Alastair Johnson at Swim Rotorua since he first started.

'He knows basically what needs to be done,” says James.

'He is a super good coach and has coached at world champs and stuff. He can see better than me what needs doing with my strokes and training. Without him I don't think I would be at national level.”

Being part of the 2019 Rotorua Young Achievers means a lot to James and he was stoked to be part of the award winning group.

'The (High Achievers) is a great group to be part of because it highlights the hard work that is behind the scenes. Most people probably would not even know about it but it is good to get recognition for the dedication you have to put in.

'I didn't have an afternoon off after school not swimming over the past five years. It is a lot of hours if you count them all up.”

Rotorua Boys' has also played a key role for James in his time there.

'I feel it is different to other schools. The teachers do listen and care about you. I have some really good relationships with most of the teachers I have had there. You feel like you can talk to them about anything and they will help you out when you need it.”

* The annual Young Achievers awards are sponsored by the Rotorua Energy Charitable Trust (RECT) for success across sports, cultural, community, academic and leadership fields.