The St Vincent and the Grenadines Amateur Swimming Association (SVGASA) in partnership with the Bank of Nova Scotia and LIME are pleased to present an update on recently completed activities and upcoming activities.{{more}}

Vincentian swimmers smash Trinidadian National Records at Trinidad’s annual swim meet.

The leading swim club in SVG, Black Sands Swim Squad (BSSS) sent a team of seven swimmers to compete in the annual Amateur Swimming Association of Trinidad and Tobago (ASATT) Invitational competition held at the St Anthony’s College in Trinidad from December 12th to 15th. This highly competitive annual event attracted some of the best swimmers from throughout the Caribbean region as well as other world class age group swimmers from the Latin Americas, Cuba and even as far as Great Britain and Sweden.

Shné Joachim and Nikolas Sylvester made certain to capture the international spectators attention when they both SMASHED two long standing Trinidadian national records when swimming in the 50 meters Breaststroke. Leaving the competition in her wake, St Vincent’s CARIFTA bronze medalist Shné completed the 50 meter breaststroke sprint in a time of 36.13 seconds, smashing the previous record by over 1.7 seconds. Not content with just one record and one gold medal, Shné kept the spectators focus on St Vincent and the Grenadines by winning another gold in the 200 meters Breaststroke and two silver medals in the 50m butterfly and 100m breaststroke events. Her total medal count was two golds and two silvers.

Heads then turned to Nikolas Sylvester when he too destroyed the Trinidadian national record in the 50m breaststroke, recording a best ever time of 33.60 seconds. Nikolas continued to impress onlookers with outstanding swims in all ten events that he entered and he proudly brought home a total of four silvers and one bronze medal.

Shane Cadogan, Alex Joachim, Storm and Cruz Halbich and Justin Sylvester made up the remaining members of the strong Black Sands Swim Squad team of seven, with each swimmer able to perform personal best times in many of their events. Both Shane and Alex were extremely competitive in their events and given that this is there first year in their respective age categories, the future for both swimmers looks very bright.

Black Sands coach Kyle Dougan commented “What an excellent result from four days of extremely hard swimming in Trinidad. Shné and Nikolas are setting a great standard for swimming talent coming out of SVG and all of our swimmers should be extremely proud of how they performed in Trinidad, representing Black Sands Swim Squad and St Vincent and the Grenadines”

He went on to express “St Vincent is a gold mine of sporting talent and as a swimming coach, I intend to find that talent and exploit it to its full potential. I would like to invite as many people as possible to try the sport of competitive swimming, the potential sporting and educational opportunities are endless once a competitor can reach the standards that BSSS can help them to attain.” The coaches at BSSS can be contacted on 532-9462 or 494-8555.

The SVGASA would like to thank the National Olympic Committee (NOC) and Olympic Solidarity for their tremendous financial assistance in assisting us to send our swimmers to compete at the ASATT Invitational.

POOL ASSISTANCE

The SVGASA would like to note that we appreciate the recognition given to our successful swimmers by our parliamentarians. However, we also need to note that we cannot continue the development of swimming without an improvement to our existing facility. We have therefore sought approval of the Government to grant us permission to extend our existing three lane 24.5 meter facility to a 25 meter, five lane facility. The SVGASA only needs permission to enlarge the facility and will NOT be seeking Government funding for this project. We hope to have Government approval for this project in the very near future. The Prime Minister and the Minister of Sport have both expressed their congratulations and appreciation for the efforts of our young swimmers and we are confident they will both support us in our efforts to develop the swimming facilities.

UPCOMING EVENTS

2014 will be an exciting year for St Vincent and the Grenadines in swimming. Upcoming events include the Scotiabank Invitational in February; the Barbados National Championships in March; the CARIFTA Championships in Aruba; the Commonwealth Games in Scotland in July/August; the Youth Olympics in China in August; the LIME OECS Time Trials Invitational in September; the OECS Championships in November in St Lucia; the CAC Games in Mexico in November and the World Championships in Doha, Qatar in December.

Please contact us at svgasa@gmail.com with any queries, comments or suggestions you may have in regard to the above or any swimming matters.