FN Sports Editor
Of the 32 member national CARIFTA Swim team headed to Jamaica this year, eight of those athletes hail from Grand Bahama.
Of those eight members, six hail from the YMCA Wave Runners and two from the Freeport Aquatics Club.
Aquatics Club swimmers are Delano McIntosh and Kadesha Culmer.
This year's CARIFTA will be held in Jamaica April 3-6.
The Freeport News was able to catch up with coach of the Wave Runners, Iva Dreske-Russell, during a practice session at the YMCA.
Coach Iva said that she's satisfied with the quality of the athletes from Grand Bahama.
Able only to speak mostly about the athletes she coaches, she noted that the team may be small, but is packed with swimmers who will be able to give The Bahamas some medals in the pool.
Of the six swimmers hailing from the Wave Runners, four have CARIFTA experiences and two are really novices making the CARIFTA team for the first time in their short swimming careers.
Evante Gibson (who is presently off in college), Mya Albury, Peter Farquharson and Taran Smith are somewhat the veterans on this year's team, all having competed at the CARIFTA level before.
Newcomers making their CARIFTA debut are Aaron Levarity and Joanna Evans.
"Those two newcomers have proven themselves not just here in Grand Bahama, but on the national scene, they were able to swim their way onto this year's team and that's impressive," said Coach Iva.
"Once September last year rolled around, I saw that these two had what it takes to be competitive and they were able to prove that by swimming the times necessary to get on this year's team."
She feels that this will be a great start to these novices' swimming careers and is confident that The Bahamas will hear more about them in the future.
With this combination of veterans and top-notch novices, coach Iva says she's looking forward to some great performances from these swimmers and an even better performance for the Bahamian team overall.
"I can say that the age group that will be the toughest will be the 13-14 division, because that's always been a tough bracket at the CARIFTA level, but I feel that the Bahamian athletes in that division will have what it takes to fight for medal contention in that division."
One of the impressive things about the swimmers coming from Grand Bahama is the fact that they made this year's team without the opportunity to compete as much as those swimmers in Nassau.
Thanks to the persistence and knowledge of coach Iva and the opportunity to have swimmers travel to the United States and to Cuba to gain experience, GB swimmers were able to qualify with times swum at those international events.
"Here in Freeport, it takes a lot of effort for parents to come up with the money to send their kids to Nassau on a regular basis to compete and qualify, so these swimmers actually made the team having only made about 40 percent of the swim meets available to them," noted Coach Iva.
"So, we have to proud of what these kids have accomplished."
