Za­hara An­tho­ny of Mar­lins wrote her name in­to the his­to­ry books when she erased a 35-year-old record held by for­mer Olympian Siob­han Crop­per on the penul­ti­mate night of com­pe­ti­tion in the Aquat­ic Sports As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (ASATT) Na­tion­al Age-Group Short Course Swim­ming Cham­pi­onship at the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va, on Sat­ur­day.

This was af­ter the 12-year-old An­tho­ny pow­ered through the 11-12 girls' 200-me­tre freestyle in two min­utes and 11.25 sec­onds, tak­ing down the mark of 2:11.86 set by Siob­han Crop­per in April 1991 — a record old­er than most of the swim­mers in the build­ing.

Sec­ond to the wall was Bluefin Aquat­ics' Seren­i­ty Pan­tin, her­self a record-break­er ear­li­er in the week, in 2:23.15, while RWB Aquat­ics Acad­e­my's Katelon Leera was third in 2:28.27.

An­tho­ny was not fin­ished, and added the 11-12 girls' 200m In­di­vid­ual Med­ley ti­tle in 2:38.64 with Pan­tin again in the sec­ond spot in 2:43.01, and Leera, an­oth­er third place fin­ish in 2:49.94.

How­ev­er, in the 100m back­stroke, Pan­tin turned the ta­bles on An­tho­ny and won in 1:10.44, with the lone record break­er on the night end­ing sec­ond this time around in 1:12.93, and Gen­e­sis Marchin of Tar­get Aquat­ics, third in 1:15.58.

RWB Aquat­ic Acad­e­my's Mic­ah Alexan­der backed up his four wins on Fri­day night by adding four more gold medals in the 11-12 boys' 200m freestyle (2:11.41), 100m back­stroke (1:05.60), and 200m in­di­vid­ual med­ley (2:30.50), and a share of a fourth ti­tle, dead-heat­ing with Kam­den Williams of Blue Dol­phins in the 50m breast­stroke, both touch­ing in 34.73 sec­onds for shared gold.

Mar­lins' Mare­na Mar­tinez al­so added to her medal haul with three more top fin­ish­es in 200m freestyle (2:13.41), 100m back­stroke (1:10.86), and 200m in­di­vid­ual med­ley (2:37.85).

The cham­pi­onship, which was sched­uled to end last night, car­ried par­tic­u­lar weight in 2026 as it served as this coun­try’s fi­nal qual­i­fi­er for the 30th Good­will Swim­ming Cham­pi­onships, with the na­tion­al team to be se­lect­ed in the week ahead. The Good­will meet will be host­ed at the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre from Au­gust 14-16.