-Swimming for fun has taken Noelle to the top of the girls’ 15-17 category

By Tamica Garnett
At first she never envisioned swimming on a competitive level but young national swimmer Noelle Smith has now risen to the top of the girls’ 15 – 17 category in local competition.

Speaking in a recent interview with Stabroek Sport, Smith admitted that her journey as a national swimmer began at one of the many developmental swimming programmes held to attract Guyana’s youths into the sport of swimming.

At that time she declared that she had no thoughts of going farther than that.

“I just got into swimming for fun, I didn’t have any mind into being where I am right now – at a competitive level, “she told Stabroek Sport.

“I started out at a `Learn to Swim’ summer programme that was held at the Colgrain Pool. I was just at home and bored that summer and my cousins were going to the class so I just went along with them,” she recounted.

“Eventually after I finished the `Learn to swim’ I joined Dorado and they became my home, my family, for like seven years now.

“Since then they’ve just been pushing and pushing and pushing me so that I can now become the national athlete that I am,” Smith recounted.

The former Bishops’ High School student has made quite a name for herself in Guyana.

Her latest accolade was earned at the recently- concluded Goodwill Games in Suriname where she became Guyana’s first ever Individual Age Group Champion.
Smith, in earning the tile, topped her fellow compatriot Henk Lowe whose best effort was to share the championship title with a Surinamese competitor.

On the way to this recent achievement, the 17-year-old won two silver and two bronze medals from the nine events that she participated in at the games.

Smith earned silver medals in the 50m breaststroke and 200m IM, and a bronze each in the 100m breaststroke and 200m freestyle races.

Not stopping there with her accomplishments at the games, Smith also reconfigured her seed times in four of her events: the 50m breaststroke (39.06), 100m breaststroke (1:25.71), 100m backstroke (1:18.76) and the 200m IM (2:45.80).

Her timings in the 50m and 100m breaststroke events saw her establishing new national records, breaking her own records, which she had established in November and December last year.

Smith also has the girls’ 15 – 17 records in the 50m butterfly (32.52s) and the 50m freestyle (29.84s).

Beginning in the girls’ 9 – 10 category, Smith’s performance quickly gained speed and she subsequently became the champion in that category. And in the 13 – 14 category she left a legacy as she still holds the national record in the 100m Butterfly event (1:17.61s).

Smith began contesting at the regional scene at the 2005 edition of the Goodwill Games.

In the 2008 games, then participating in the 13 – 14 category, Smith was one of only two Guyanese swimmers to grab a gold medal when she contested in the 50m freestyle event.

And in the Inter-Guiana Games held earlier that year, Smith churned out two bronze medals.  She later moved on to grab three bronze medals in the 2009 IGG and became a gold medalist in the 2009 Goodwill Games which was held in Barbados.

Smith was among Guyana’s four performers who attended the FINA World Championships in Rome last year.

Smith stated that having reached the top of the scale in Guyana, partaking in competitions outside of Guyana played a vital role in the development of her swimming career. She noted that for national swimmers, the exposure and experience attained at those competitions do play an essential role as it gives them a chance to compare themselves to the level of competition outside of Guyana.

“The regional and international competitions that we attend they are totally different from the competitions that we have here because people like myself, Britany (van Lange), Soroya (Simmons), Kevon (De Moura) and Jaime (Jabbar) – those who are at the peak of their events at those competitions – we would get to know for sure how we stand up against other persons outside of Guyana. Those competitions enable us to know where we stand relative to others out there,” Smith related.

“So, at competitions like Goodwill Games and IGG, it is really good that we get the experience,” she added.

Currently, Smith has departed Guyana to further her studies at the University of the West Indies in the twin-island republic of Trinidad and Tobago.

However the 17-year-old affirmed her patriotism to her homeland and said that she will return to Guyana to participate in the 2011 Goodwill Games.

Meanwhile, Smith is aspiring to achieve the ultimate goal of participating and medaling at the Olympic Games. But at present she is looking forward to participating at the World Short Course Swimming Championships to be held in Dubai in December.