At just 11 years old, and after only one year of competitive swimming, Matt is starting to notch up some impressive performances in the pool.
His mother, Helen Henderson, said big feet ran in the family and Matt's size 10s were no exception.
Matt agreed the inherited physical feature probably gave him an edge.
‘‘I get most of my speed from my kick,'' he said.
After joining the Wanaka swim squad under coach Fi Fairbairn at the start of last year, Matt set about competing in various swimming events and it was not long before he began to get some encouraging results.
After competing at the Orca Labour Weekend Carnival in Invercargill last year, Matt's 50m freestyle time earned him a spot at the New Zealand junior swimming championships held last month.
At recent time trials in Cromwell he qualified for two more races - the 50m and 100m breaststroke.
‘‘That's when we really noticed his breaststroke had taken leaps and bounds,'' Mrs Henderson said.
Matt said, based on his recent successes in the pool, the breaststroke was his ‘‘main stroke now''.
He was surprised to make a qualifying time for the national-level competition.
‘‘I didn't really think that after only one year swimming [competitively] I'd get that far.''
Because of illness during the Otago junior championships in January, Matt missed or scratched all but one of his races - the 50m breaststroke in the age 10 and 11 category, which he won.
The Southland junior championships the following weekend produced another two wins in the 50m and 100m breaststroke.
Matt had, by that stage, qualified for four races at the junior nationals - the 50m freestyle, 50m and 100m breaststroke and one race of his choice, which was the 100m freestyle.
Mrs Henderson said the national competition last month was held simultaneously at three different venues in the country, so there was an anxious wait after each race while the times of the South Island swimmers competing in Dunedin were compared with results from the other two venues.
Matt gained a second, third and fourth place in the South Island in his 100m breaststroke, 50m freestyle and 100m freestyle respectively, but it was in the boys aged 10, 50m breaststroke that his time of 43.16sec ranked third in New Zealand, for which he won a bronze medal and was one of just three Otago medallists.
Further success came a couple of weeks ago in the form of a broken record at the Central Otago primary school swimming sports.
Matt knocked two seconds off the record for boys aged 11, 25m breaststroke.
His goal next season is to break the Otago 50m breaststroke record for boys aged 10 and 11.
