The Guyana Amateur Swimming Association (GASA) yesterday identified 15 members, following its July Sprint Meet, to represent Guyana at the upcoming Goodwill Championship set for August 16-18 at the Barbados Aquatic Centre.
GASA officials identified Soroya Simmons, Athena Gaskin, Hannibal Gaskin, Leon Seaton, Omar Adams, Accalia Khan, Omari Dunn, Jamila Sanmoogan, Onika George,
Brittany van Lange, Derick Ramsaroop, Jamal Skeete, Daniel Scott, Amy Grant, Sarah King, Joseph De Nobrega and Nathon Hackett over the past week.
Stabroek Sport understands that last year’s Goodwill’s gold medallist, Onika George and Brittany van Lange will not be competing in these games as they both have other international competitions.
George, a student of the Bishops’ High School is presently preparing for the South American Youth Games in Peru from September 18-29. She qualified for the event at the Carifta Swimming Championship within the past year. Hannibal Gaskin and Omar Adams will be joining George at the Youth Games.
George’s schoolmate and last year’s Olympian, van Lange, is set to compete tomorrow at the FINA World Championship in Barcelona, Spain along with Niall Roberts and Earlando McRae.
Last year’s edition of the Goodwill Championship was hosted in Guyana at the National Aquatic Centre where the local swimmers produced a poor performance leading to an overall fourth place finish with 514 points.
Suriname who also competed, retained their title and amassed 1507 points comprising 695 points and 812 points from the Women’s and Men’s teams respectively. Trinidad and Tobago finished second with a combined score of 1443.5; Barbados came third with 898.5. Guyana’s Women’s team scored 36 points more than the Men’s who had 239 points. In the wake of these results, GASA Secretary Dee George said the Association has “opted to find a way to add to the team, giving more swimmers further exposure to this developmental meet as was intended.” An additional trial will be conducted next week at the pool to give non-qualifiers who missed the qualifying mark by a slim margin another chance to make the team. Goodwill Team Manager, Ivan Persaud told Stabroek Sport yesterday that some of the swimmers were at a disadvantage at the trials since most of this year’s competition comprised long course meets.
“The trial next week is to give the swimmers a next chance as some had problems with their turns since we converted from long course to short course,” he explained.
According to Persaud, the team is already in full training, with sessions in the mornings and evenings but he pointed out that it was not at full strength as a majority of the other participating teams have a full contingent of 40 swimmers. Despite that, Persaud who is also the Vice President of the Guyana Football Federation (GFF) is confident that the Association will be able to field a 40-member team by 2016, when Guyana hosts the Champion-ship again. He indicated that an increase in participation which will call for new blood will be required to achieve the goal. “We are hoping to start a Pilot Project at the Colgrain Pool from the next school term (September) for inner city schools. I think the project will allow an increase in mass participation in swimming,” he said.
Other members of the team are Jean La Rose (Assistant Team Manager), Leon Seaton Snr (Chaperone), Isabel Fals (Cuban Coach- for 11 and over swimmers), Shyka Gonsalves (Coach for 10 and under swimmers) and Sean Baksh (Coach overseeing training).
