The team set personal bests across the three-day event, with up to five seconds knocked off previous best times.

Miette Hopper just missed out on a medal in the 100-metre breaststroke final on Sunday afternoon, finishing fourth.

Coach Paul Atherton was thrilled with the squad’s performance.

He said the team of nine, up from three in 2014, stepped up to the occasion across the three-day event, which finished on Monday.

Atherton said he was impressed by the under-12 girls medley relay team of Maddix Hughes, Hopper, Isabella Geue and Jaclyn Clode.

He said that after three heats of 10 teams, the Sharks finished with the seventh-fastest time on Monday.

‘‘We swam in the first heat and beat all the other teams by a big margin,’’ he said.

Atherton said the relay team was second after the second heat.

‘‘We thought we might be a chance, because you just never know what can happen with relays because of disqualifications,’’ he said.

However, the final heat had a stronger field than the first two and the team dropped from second to seventh.

Atherton said his daughter Layla set a personal best in the 100-metre butterfly by three seconds on Monday and vastly improved on last year’s performance.

‘‘She went from being ranked 28th in country Victoria last year to being ranked 12th this year, which is obviously a huge improvement,’’ he said.

Atherton said Angus Tickner beat his 100-metre backstroke personal best by 2.5 seconds and was named as an emergency for the final.

He said Geue and Tom Castine just missed out on setting new personal bests.

‘‘We’ve changed the way we coach a little bit to assist with preparation and recovery, which I think has really helped us,’’ he said.

‘‘They are quite long days at the event so we asked the kids to go home and have a sleep in the middle of the day and to also do warm-down swims.

‘‘We’ve reduced the volume of swimming they do at training and have focused more on technique as well. We can certainly tell the difference.’’

Last year was the first time a Horsham squad had attended the championships in more than a decade.

Atherton said he had paid attention to what other clubs did at this year’s event, with the aim to improve the Sharks swimmers’ performances.

‘‘A lot of the big clubs have tents where they take their swimmers to rest and do a bit of massage,’’ he said.

‘‘To do that we would need a lot of support from the parents, which might not be possible, but we can always see if it might work.’’