Jessica Stephenson achieved a quite historic feat for herself and the Guyana Amateur Swimming Association (GASA) when she participated in the 2011 CARIFTA Swimming Championships which ended recently in Barbados.
Competing in the girls’ 15-17 years events, the Trinidad-based Stephenson made a clean sweep of the breaststroke events claiming gold medals in the 200m, 100m and 50m.
Stephenson has so far acquired a total of six CARIFTA gold medals from participating at the Games.
Stephenson and Britany Van Lange were Guyana’s representatives at the games.
Van Lange also turned in a significant maiden CARIFTA performance for Guyana, qualifying for four finals out of the six events she entered.
She was unfortunate to narrowly miss a podium finish when she finished fourth in one of her finals.
Yesterday, President of GASA, Alex Graham, along with the CARIFTA swim team and members of GASA paid a courtesy call on Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport Dr. Frank Anthony.
Following the meeting Stabroek Sports was able speak to Graham who said that he was quite pleased with the performance of the team and even more pleased that soon they will have a top standard facility at their service.
“Now that we will be getting a 50m pool it will make a considerable difference because we can now prepare out athletes at a higher level. “Often when the athletes go to international meet they see facilities they are not accustomed to so now they have the opportunity to see and benefit from it,” said Graham.
He added that it had been struggling year for the sport given the fact that the Colgrain swimming pool was under renovation.
According to Graham though, they will not be abandoning the Colgrain Pool as it will be used for development purposes especially for use by beginners and intermediates while the competitive athletes will use the 50m pool.
Graham opined that since they have the ability to win gold medals at international meets, it is now the primary goal of the association to host the Goodwill and CARIFTA Games in 2012 and 2013 respectively.
“We are still in active discussion with the ministry on a number of programmes and systems of whole usage for the benefit our competitive athletes and so far we are satisfied with the discussions and the levels which we have progressed to,” he said.
Graham was optimistic about future international meets.
“Performances will surely be raised; Britany’s level and the quality of her performance is testimony (that) even though she had not as much preparation as Jessica, she bettered her personal best times in the finals she qualified for.”
Photo caption: Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport Dr. Frank Anthony (centre) poses with the CARIFTA swim team coach Stephanie Fraser (left), Jessica Stephenson (second left), Britany Van Lange (second right) and President of GASA Alex Graham.
