A rising Tauranga swim star has made Swimming New Zealand's National Development Squad for 2017.

Lochlainn O'Connor, who trains with Greerton Swimming Club, made the team after a year of consistently strong swimming.

The 16-year-old Aquinas College student says he'd like to say he could swim before he could walk.

'I've been swimming for as long as I can remember. Competitively, I've been doing it for about five years.”

Making this year's squad came to down to how many FINA points Lochlainn had. The points system, devised by international swimming body FINA (Federation Internationale de Natation), assigns point values to swimming performances, with more points for world class performances typically 1000 or more and fewer points for slower performances.

A useful point of reference: Michael Phelps sits at around 1000 FINA points.

Lochlainn is at around 670 at the moment, with his highest being 677.

'As you get older you're expected to make more FINA points,” he says. 'Still got a bit of work to do though.”

His main coach is Tai Daniela, who Lochlainn says does a really good job. He also receives coaching from Riccardo Pini.

Some of Lochlainn's recent success – which no doubt contributed to his high FINA points – include competing in the Australian age group champs, where he came fourth and sixth in the 100m and 200m butterfly, respectively.

'Back here in New Zealand I also went to the national age group champs and got first in the 100m butterfly, and second in the 50m and 200m butterfly.”

Naturally, the butterfly is his favourite, although he says generally he's a good all-rounder.

'Breaststroke is probably the hardest to coordinate,” he laughs.

As for the future, he thinks it makes sense to be looking to the Olympics if you're swimming competitively.

'Next year I'm hoping to make the Youth Olympic team, so that's the big goal at the moment.”