Canberra swimmer Kayla Hardy was waiting tables when she learned of her first Australian Dolphins selection

The 19-year-old opened the email mid-shift and told her colleagues at Frankies at Forde, before cheers erupted.

Hardy has been selected in the Australian team for the World Swimming Championships (25m) in Melbourne later this year.

She was named after swimming two world qualifying times at the Australian Short Course Championships last weekend, but she did not know if it would be enough.

"It was still pretty up in the air. So it feels great, I didn't think I'd be here at this point in time," the Cruiz Swim Club member said.

"I thought the A squad was were I was going to be for this year, so it's an extra-bonus.

"I don't think it has quite clicked with me yet."

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She made the Australian A swimming team earlier this year - for swimmers not competing at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games - to compete at the USA Open Nationals.

But a Dolphins team has been a dream of Hardy's since she started getting serious about swimming at 12, and it has been at the top of her list.

So the University of Canberra student's family and friends were just as excited about her full strength selection.

And if their reaction to her results last weekend are anything to go by, there will be a lot of Hardy fans tuning in in December.

"They are all ecstatic," she said.

"They actually filmed my poolside interview after I did the 400IM and I got them cheering me in the background of the video.

"They threw a little party for me too, my room is actually completely filled with yellow and green balloons. It was a nice little surprise when I got home."

The medley has always been her pet event, and it all started with her first coach Jim Fowlie.

Before her recent success under coach Shannon Rollason at the ACT hub program.

"[Jim] always thought that I'd be an IM swimmer, and I mean, he's been proven right. I still am," Hardy said.

"But long course is almost a completely different set of events. So different people specialise in that. So it'd be great to make a long course team as well."

Melbourne is still three months away, and her focus is on letting her selection news sink in before she dives into a big training block.

With her eye on improving her freestyle leg to end her races.

"I've been really nailing the butterfly, and we've been trying to improve strokes, just technique wise in all four strokes," Hardy said.

"[Shannon] was confident that I could swim what I did and make the team so I trusted him, I trusted in myself, and the training that I had been doing for this past year. And it paid off, it worked."

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