Red, White, and Black Acad­e­my swim club had an event­ful four-day Na­tion­al Open Short Course Swim­ming Cham­pi­onships of silent protest and na­tion­al record achieve­ments.

RWB ap­plied to the Aquat­ic Sports As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (ASATT) in Oc­to­ber 2021 for or­di­nary mem­ber­ship as they met the con­sti­tu­tion­al fi­nan­cial re­quire­ments and had ten ac­tive com­pet­i­tive swim­mers.

How­ev­er, the lo­cal body for the sport has stat­ed no or­di­nary mem­bers would be ac­cept­ed un­til the con­sti­tu­tion­al process is com­plet­ed, a process with an ini­tial dead­line of May 2022.

Dur­ing the fi­nals host­ed by ASATT at the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va on Fri­day evening, RWB mem­bers took the op­por­tu­ni­ty for a silent protest where their ath­letes taped their mouths to in­di­cate the lack of voice they have due to the in­or­di­nate de­lays by ASATT.

They held a sign en­cour­ag­ing ASATT to give RWB or­di­nary mem­ber­ship, and de­mand­ing fair­ness, hon­esty, and in­tegri­ty. RWB al­so start­ed a pe­ti­tion on their web­site rw­ba­cad­e­my.com gar­ner­ing over 700 sig­na­tures.

Reached for com­ment, Joseph Mc Leod, the first vice-pres­i­dent of ASATT con­firmed the stance of the lo­cal gov­ern­ing body for the sport and said, “The de­ci­sion has been tak­en by the coun­cil that no new or­di­nary mem­bers will be ac­cept­ed as or­di­nary mem­bers un­til our con­sti­tu­tion has been ac­cept­ed by FI­NA, the world gov­ern­ing body for the sport.

“And at present our new con­sti­tu­tion is be­fore FI­NA for their ap­proval and ac­cep­tance and on­ly then we can move for­ward, with our lo­cal elec­tions and the ac­cep­tance of new or­di­nary mem­bers.

In the pool on Fri­day, RWB’s An­pherne Bernard re­in­forced the club’s mis­sion for mem­ber­ship win­ning gold in the 11 and Over boys’ 200m breast­stroke in a time of two min­utes, 25.19 sec­onds, break­ing a 30-year-old record of the 13-14 age-group which was held by Stephan Ot­t­ley (2:26.03).

The RWB swim­mers con­tin­ued their ex­cel­lence with Ty­la Ho-A-Shu low­er­ing her own 15-17 girls 50m breast­stroke record of 33.18 sec­onds to es­tab­lish a new mark of 32.62 in win­ning gold in the event.

Speak­ing at the meet RWB head coach Deronn ‘Rocky’ Sam­lals­ingh said he was pleased with the per­for­mance of his club and his ath­letes, in­clu­sive of the stance they took on be­half of the club.

“I am very pleased to see swim­mers who spent no re­al-time in a ta­per phase get up and go as fast as they do. As the pro­gram con­tin­ues to bring changes in­tro­duc­ing new el­e­ments to build strength and mo­bil­i­ty it was very en­cour­ag­ing to see var­i­ous as­pects of the var­i­ous swim­mers im­proved as he be­lieves in the process­es of the fi­nal goal.”

With re­gards to the protest ac­tion by RWB, Sam­lals­ingh said, “We still await the club’s ac­cep­tance as or­di­nary mem­bers but we be­lieve the mes­sage was re­ceived by our swim­mers and a les­son learned in stand­ing up for your­self with­out bring­ing dis­re­pute. We hope that no con­tin­u­a­tion of the same is need­ed as this re­quest is a very sim­ple one and has been long over­due.

“From the youngest to the old­est swim­mers agreed with the mea­sures tak­en with some ask­ing ques­tions and even sug­gest­ing al­ter­ations to the protest to get our mes­sage across. While it is nev­er our goal to teach dis­re­spect or have swim­mers in­volved in the ad­min­is­tra­tive op­er­a­tions we know that our ath­letes have been af­fect­ed by the lack of mem­ber­ship. We do hope for a prompt res­o­lu­tion to this is­sue which crip­ples our rights as a club.”

How­ev­er, Mc Leod point­ed out that the club must show some pa­tience and added, “FI­NA is very se­ri­ous about con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, and each as­so­ci­a­tion must have their house in or­der, and we are in the process of do­ing so, and in my view, the state­ments of the RWB club are a bit of false in­for­ma­tion with re­spect as to why we have not ad­mit­ted them as or­di­nary mem­bers.”

In­di­vid­ual High Point win­ners

Girls:

Ten and Un­der:

1 Za­lay­har Lewis (Blue Light­ning) - 81 points

2 Za­hara An­tho­ny (Mar­lins) - 61

3 Elin Stone (Mar­lins) - 52

11 and Over:

1 Kiara Goodridge (Blue Dol­phins) - 74

2 Amelia Ra­jack (At­lantis Aquat­ics) - 64

3 Amari Ash (Blue Light­ning) - 53

Boys:

Ten and Un­der:

1 Aiden Nixon (Tidal Wave Aquat­ics) - 72

2 Mic­ah Alexan­der (Ea­gles Aquat­ics) - 69

3 Eli Ed­wards (Petrotrin Bar­racu­d­as) - 57

11 and Over:

1 Zachary An­tho­ny (Mar­lins) - 81

2 Dar­ren Bel­fon (Point Fortin Aqua Darts) - 71

3 Ale­janadro Agard (Mar­lins) - 50