Leon Seaton Jr, Lian Winter, Raekwon Noel, Aleka Persaud and Patrice Mahaica have managed to qualify for the CARIFTA Games Swimming which will be held in Kingston, Jamaica from March 30 to April 3.
Their qualification came after a productive meeting in the pool over the weekend when the Guyana Amateur Swimming Association held its Mashramani Long Course Meet at the National Aquatic Centre.
The ever improving Seaton, competing in the 13-14 age group clocked 25.35s in the 50m Freestyle to comfortably beat the qualifying time of 26.02s. His feat was even more astounding as it was the fastest better Andre Fowler who competed in the 18 and over and clocked 25.64s. His female equivalent was Lian Winter in the 200m Butterfly with a time of 3:04.90 better than the needed 03:08.7.
Noel who is an 11-12 competitor made the most qualifications. The extremely talented natural athlete got ahead of the 2:20.4 in the 200m Freestyle to register 2:19.47 while in the 200 Individual Medley he clocked 2:41.53 which was enough to beat the 2:44.1 standard. In the 400m Freestyle the time needed was 5:11.4 and he easily stopped the clock at 4:56.17.
Also in the 11-12 group was Persaud who won all of her races at the event but only made the cut for 50m Freestyle in 30.12s just inside the 30.17s marker; she also got the honours in the 50m Butterfly with 32.38s bettering the 32.57 required.
Another 11-12 competitor in Mahaica bettered the 34.75s by clocking 34.72s to head to Kingston for the 50m Backstroke.
In an invited comment senior national coach Sean Baksh expressed his delight in the positive signs showed at the long course meet. He explained that though there were not the best signs shown by swimmers it was a great start and they will now look to improve in areas such as turns to bring about more efficiency.
It is understood that consideration can be given to other swimmers based on ‘B’ standard but that decision is in the hands of GASA’s technical committee.
