Fresh off host­ing a suc­cess­ful Union Amer­i­can De Nat­a­cion (UA­NA) Youth Pan Amer­i­can Wa­ter Po­lo Cham­pi­onship in Au­gust, the Am­a­teur Swim­ming As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T has been award­ed the 2022 Pan Amer­i­can Aquat­ic Cham­pi­onships.

This was con­firmed by new­ly ap­point­ed UA­NA Mas­ters Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee mem­ber and for­mer chair­man of the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT), and na­tion­al swim­mer, Se­bas­t­ian Padding­ton on Wednes­day.

Com­ment­ing on im­pend­ing host­ing of the event, Padding­ton, who rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the 2000 Syd­ney Olympic Games said it is ex­pect­ed to be the biggest ever host­ed by this coun­try with more than 5,000 ath­letes from no few­er than 20 coun­tries

Padding­ton was ap­point­ed to the Mas­ters Di­vi­sion Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of UA­NA on Sep­tem­ber 23, while for­mer ASATT boss, David Mc Leod was named Sec­re­tary of the Coach­es Com­mit­tee for the 2019-2023 term.

Both Padding­ton, the founder of T&T Mas­ters Swim­ming Club and Mc Leod re­ceived their ap­point­ments via emails from UA­NA Pres­i­dent Mau­reen Croes on the same date.

Padding­ton said he wel­comes the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve the sport in an­oth­er ca­pac­i­ty while help­ing to raise the pro­file of swim­ming in T&T as well.

"I just want to help con­tin­ue to de­vel­op the sport in the re­gion and here in T&T, not on­ly at a UA­NA lev­el but at the FI­NA lev­el where we will be able to see more Bovells (George), Carters (Dy­lan) and my­self emerge," end­ed Padding­ton.

In ad­di­tion to Padding­ton the oth­er mem­bers of the Mas­ters Com­mit­tee which is head­ed by Ex­ec­u­tive Com­mit­tee Li­ai­son Mar­cus Jara are USA's Mel Gold­stein (chair­man), Venezue­lan En­der Luzar­do (vice-chair­man), Cana­da's Ed Ev­el­ly (sec­re­tary), Cuban Ima­daya Nunez Gon­za­lez (sec­re­tary), and mem­bers Julio Galiano (Paraguay), Car­los Rober­to Da Sil­va (Brazil), Edith Clash­ing (An­tigua & Bar­bu­da), Ana Fortin (Hon­duras), Na­dine Day (USA), and Dot Pad­get (Cana­da).

Mc Leod will serve as sec­re­tary of the six-mem­ber Coach­es Com­mit­tee which is head­ed by Thi­a­go Pereira and chair­man Yash­want Daryanani of Suri­name along with mem­bers' Fred­dy Tor­res (Nicaragua), Justin Oliveira Cana­da), and Michael Lawrence (USA).

In the let­ter from the UA­NA boss, she stat­ed that she was con­vinced each of the per­sons se­lect­ed with the sup­port of their fed­er­a­tion, have been cho­sen be­cause they are hard­work­ing, de­vot­ed and ca­pa­ble to serve UA­NA and the aquat­ic sports in our re­gion.

Padding­ton was named to one of the six Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tees (Artis­tic Swim­ming, Div­ing, Mas­ters, Open Wa­ter, Swim­ming, Wa­ter Po­lo) which con­sists of 11 mem­bers, three from Zone One, four from Zone Two, and two each from Zone Three and Zone Four.