A confident TT team heads to Barbados on Thursday for the Goodwill Swim Meet.
Trinidad and Tobago will be seeking our fifth consecutive victory at the Annual Goodwill Swim Meet which splashes off this Friday in Barbados.
The team is being managed by Nefertiti Acosta-Yates with the Head Coach being Mark Alexis.
Multiple CAC gold-medalist Dylan Carter, who also represented T&T at Goodwill back in 2008, was present at the last team session on Saturday at the Aquatic Centre, and gave words of advice to the young athletes.
The Goodwill Swim Meet is a developmental meet where swimmers who have represented Trinidad and Tobago at CARIFTA, CCCAN and higher level meets, are excluded. Carter, who would have been eligible for CARIFTA in 2008, did not qualify for CARIFTA.
Following the Goodwill experience in 2008, in Carter’s second year in the 11-12 age group in 2009, he swam to eight Carifta records, two national records, eight gold and one silver medal at his first CARIFTA in Aruba.
On Saturday, Carter relayed to the athletes his journey from the Goodwill Swim Meet in 2008.
He expressed his disappointment about being dropped from the national water polo team in 2008 but said he decided to attend swim training in afternoons. His coach at the time, Franz Huggins, encouraged him to try out for the Goodwill Swim Team and the National Goodwill Trials was his first competitive swim meet.
Eight years later, he was in a World Senior Championships final.
He encouraged the athletes to use disappointments to their advantage as it can open doors for them, and acknowledged the Goodwill Swim Meet as one of the stepping stones to his success.
Meanwhile, both Acosta-Yates and Alexis are confident of T & T’s chances of defending their title
“The pressure is on for us to deliver our fifth consecutive victory. However, we are confident that we have a combination of experience and talent, and an overall enthusiasm that will make us a force to be reckoned with,” she said.
Alexis was more assured of the team’s prospects.
“The team has great depth all round with a very solid composition of athletes, especially with those who are knocking on the doors of Carifta and CCCAN,” he said.
“Based on performances at National Age Group Short Course, the team selected and coaches working behind the scenes, I’m looking forward to fast swims, top three finishes and when the ‘dust settles’ TTO with the top spot.”
The team departs on Thursday at 8:50pm and the swimmers will complete the last of their meet preparation with their clubs this week as their last national training session was held at the National Aquatic Centre last Saturday.
The team is captained by 15-17 age group athletes Brandon Coombs and Bianca Prevatt and will include eight and under girls Alyssa Reid, Netania Edwards, Asia-Marie Pouchet and Tamia Archibald.
The eight and under boy’s team will be comprised of Rylan Thomas, Adam Scoon, Alejandro Agard and Zaheed Walter.
The 9-10 girls are Keryn Burke, Shauna Nelson, Madara Edwards, Atiyah Walter while the 9-10 boys will be Giovanni Rivas, Zachary Anthony, Liam Carrington and Jacob Cox.
The 11-12 girls will be represented by Kiara Goodridge, Amari Ash, Sharana Balkaran, Daniella Blackman with the boys being represented by Dillon Jaglal, Nathan Pascall, Keron Kotiah, and Justin Hassranah.
In the 13 - 14 girls, TT will field Isabella Edwards, Patricia-Lee Ravello, Naomi Walters and Jaedra Douglas with the boys’ team being comprised of Aaron Stuart, Gardel Elcock, Nicholas Francois and Prince Moreau.
The 15-17 girls will have Kami Morean, Courtney Lawrence, Bianca Prevatt, and Analee Maharaj with Jordon McMillan, Brandon Coombs, Dante Williams and Jamaal Pascall representing the boys.
Leighton Levy is a journalist with 28 years’ experience covering crime, entertainment, and sports. He joined the staff at SportsMax.TV as a content editor two years ago and is enjoying the experience of developing sports content and new ideas. At SportsMax.tv he is pursuing his true passion - sports.
Atkinson opens World Cup tour with 50m breaststroke gold
Jamaica’s Alia Atkinson took the gold medal in her pet event, the 50m breaststroke at the opening leg of the FINA World Cup in Tokyo, Japan on Tuesday.
JFF could face fine for CONCACAF U-15 fiasco
The Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) is likely to face a fine, in addition to a bill for reimbursement, after the embarrassing fiasco that forced the team to withdraw from the CONCACAF U-15 Championships last week.
The Jamaicans were originally slated to compete in Group D, alongside Costa Rica, Portugal and Barbados. The team was, however, forced to pull out of the tournament as not enough players were able to acquire US visa in time.
According to JFF General Secretary Dalton Wint, the organization was unable to secure emergency visa appointments for most of the team, following the US Embassy’s inability to handle the request. Wint explained that the reason given was that the embassy was short-staffed during the Independence Day holiday period. Only five of the 21 players held valid travel documents.
Based on CONCACAF statues the JFF could be in hot water. The regulations state that ‘if a team withdraws before the start of the competition, they will be fined US$10,000’. The Jamaica Football organizing body could also foreseeably be asked to reimburse CONCACAF and the Local Organising Committee (LOC) for any costs incurred as a result of its proposed involvement or eventual non-involvement.
‘Worst dive’ brings Knight-Wisdom silver surprise
Jamaican diver Yona Knight-Wisdom’s silver medal in the 1-metre springboard event at the Pan American Games in Lima, Peru may not have been a complete surprise, but the dive he used to get him on the podium was.
Knight-Wisdom, posted a video of a backward triple from the three-metre diving board, saying it was crazy to think this was his worst dive in the not-too-distant past.
“Can we just take a minute to appreciate that his used to be my worst dive on 3M,” said Knight-Wisdom.
The dive gave Knight-Wisdom 81.6 points on the 1-metre board, with one judge scoring it as a nine.
Those points went a long way to helping Knight-Wisdom, Jamaica’s first Olympic diver, to 429.90 overall points and a silver medal.
“Someone tell me how that’s possible please,” said Knight-Wisdom, who takes on the 3-metre event today.
Knight-Wisdom received congratulations from the Jamaica Olympic Association and minister of sport, Olivia Grange.
Grange said: Yona himself said his silver medal was a fitting gift for Jamaica on Emancipation Day and on behalf of the nation I wish to thank him for his historic performance.”
Knight-Wisdom is the first diver to ever win a medal at the Pan Am games for Jamaica.
Another medal came Jamaica’s way at the Pan Am games through an unlikely source, as super heavyweight boxer, one of the few from the island, Ricardo Brown, mined bronze.
This wasn’t the first-ever for Jamaica, but it is the first in 16 years.
The Jamaica Olympic Association and Jamaican trainer Dewith Frazer, were credited with helping to achieve the feat, as the two came together to put on a one-month training camp for Brown in the United States that went a long way to making him more prepared.
"At that gym, Ricardo was able to work with boxers in his weight class and this helped him a great deal because in Jamaica there is a scarcity of boxers in that weight category,” said Leroy Brown, Jamaica Boxing Board General Secretary.
SportsMax is the Caribbean sports channel of choice, committed to providing sporting content
of the highest quality to the Caribbean, delivered by a team of highly innovative,
passionate and qualified professionals.
(876) 619-7629
digitalmedia@sportsmax.tv
