Nigel Si­mon

Flori­da-based Alexan­dria Don­ahue has with­drawn from the T&T team which de­parts on Sun­day to com­pete at the 29th Carif­ta Swim­ming Cham­pi­onships from Mon­day to Sun­day at the Pisci­na Olimpi­co Roly Bis­lik, Oran­jes­tad, Sa­vane­ta, Aru­ba, the same venue as in 2009.

Don­ahue, who at­tends Plant Se­nior High School, was a key mem­ber of both the Carif­ta, and Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Am­a­teur Swim­ming Con­fed­er­a­tion (CC­CAN) meets for the past years and was ex­pect­ed to play a vi­tal role at this meet as well but is un­avail­able.

Last year, she swam to gold in the 15-17 girls 100 me­tres breast­stroke (1:12.33 mins) and sil­ver in the 15-17 girls 200m breast­stroke in 2:43.05, to de­ny Ja­maican duo Zara Bai­ley (2:41.37) and Bre­an­na Ro­man (2:44.14), a one-two fin­ish at the Carif­ta meet in Ja­maica while at the CC­CAN event, she won the CC­CAN 100m breast­stroke in 1:14.01 and al­so added a bronze.

De­spite her ab­sence, T&T will be rep­re­sent­ed by a very com­pet­i­tive 33-mem­ber team led by David Mc Leod and Jabari Bap­tiste for the Carif­ta meet which is ex­pect­ed to be a very com­pet­i­tive one as it will serve as an of­fi­cial qual­i­fy­ing meet for the 16th FI­NA World Cham­pi­onships 2015 which will be held in Kazan, Rus­sia.

It has al­ready been ap­proved as a qual­i­fy­ing meet for Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games (CAC) in Ve­r­acruz, Mex­i­co and the Youth Olympic Games.

In Aru­ba, T&T will be aim­ing for its first team ti­tle since 2010 in Ja­maica af­ter it end­ed sec­ond on the medal ta­ble with a haul of 51 (22 gold, 16 sil­ver and 13 bronze), 13 be­hind Guade­loupe (17 gold, 28 sil­ver and 19 bronze) last year while Aru­ba was third with 50 (21 gold, 17 sil­ver and 12 bronze). It was the third straight win for Guade­loupe.

At the Am­a­teur Swim­ming As­so­ci­a­tion Na­tion­al Long Course swim meet which was held in March, Mc Leod of At­lantis Aquat­ics and Bap­tiste of Mar­lins used the event which served as a qual­i­fi­er for the Carif­ta Swim meet and Caribbean Is­lands Swim­ming Cham­pi­onship, to book tick­ets to the Nan­jing, Chi­na Youth Olympic by bet­ter­ing qual­i­fy­ing times in the 15-17 boys 50m freestyle.

Mc Leod won the event in 23.98 while Bap­tiste took sil­ver in 24.20 sec­onds as they both dipped un­der the B stan­dard qual­i­fy­ing time while at­tain­ing Carif­ta A and B marks as well.

Al­so in the swim squad is Ja­da Chai of At­lantis, the stand­out swim­mer at the long course event with no few­er than 12 Carif­ta qual­i­fy­ing times at­tained, and Arieos Aquat­e­chs' Kristin Julien, who has al­so se­cured a tick­et to Chi­na. T&T will al­so be rep­re­sent­ed in the Open Wa­ter swim where the girls 15-17 trio of David-sis­ters, Syr­i­ah and Sha­nia, and Theana Hay are medal con­tenders.

Last year in Ja­maica, Syr­i­ah won the 15-17 Open Wa­ter gold while Hay got sil­ver, and Sha­nia won sil­ver in the 13-14 cat­e­go­ry, and Chris­t­ian Mars­den, bronze in the boys' equiv­a­lent.

For the swim team, Mar­lins' Mark Pouchet will serve as head coach while for­mer ASATT pres­i­dent, Hazel Haynes of Tidal Wave Aquat­ics has been ap­point­ed coach of the Open Wa­ter team.

The duo of Bri­an Wick­ham (Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence Sea Hawks) and Cha­beth Haynes (Tidal Wave) are al­so part of the coach­ing staff which will be man­aged by for­mer na­tion­al swim­mer, Shas­tri Sankar.

On re­turn home, the lo­cal swim­mers will then turn their at­ten­tion to the Caribbean Is­lands Swim­ming Cham­pi­onship card­ed for Bar­ba­dos in Ju­ly.

T&T Carif­ta Swim­ming team

Open Wa­ter

13-14 Boys: Chris­t­ian Mars­den, Kael Yorke, James Gillette

15-17 Boys: Ji­van Chee Foon, An­drew Gillette, Kyle Carac­ci­o­lo

15-17 Girls: Syr­i­ah David, Theana Hay, Sha­nia David

Swim­mers

11-12 Girls: Ja­da Chai, Jah­mia Harley, Vris­nelit Fau­re, Deshor Ed­wards, Sab­ri­na David

11-12 Boys: Gabriel By­noe, Aqeel Joseph, Josi­ah Duke, Luke Gillette, Jae-Hwa Lee Wing, Jean-Marc Grander­son

13-14 Girls: Ami­ra Pil­grim

13-14 Boys: Justin Sam­lals­ingh, Kael Yorke, Chris­t­ian Mars­den, Os­aze Ri­ley, James Gillette, Jeron Thomp­son, Dario Omiss, Christo­pher Mo­hammed

15-17 Girls: Kris­ten Julien, Ariel Cape, Syr­i­ah David,

15-17 Boys: David Mc Leod, Jabari Bap­tiste, Jeron O'Brien, Jonathan Farah, Joshua Ramkissoon