20 Sep 2015

Dmss Gators swimming club has won Botswana Swimming Sports Association (BASSA) first league gala held at the University of Botswana over the weekend..

Gators won the first league gala with an impressive 1 852 points ahead of Gaborone Aquatic club that collected 661 points. Phoenix swimming club settled for third position with 476 points coming ahead of University of Botswana who accumulated 193 points while Swimrite came fifth with 43 points.

The competition was mostly attended by young and aspiring swimmers, most of them at a younger age of 15 years displayed a hopeful sight with for the future of swimming in the country.

From under 10 years Sheran Edirisinghe phoenix swimming club Boys breaststroke improved his seeding time of 56, 38 to a new record of 51,91. Ethan Fischer Gators swimming also followed pursuit improving his time from 36,88 seconds to a 36, 25 seconds winning the under 12 category. From the girls side Gator’s Shamiso Mantondze displayed a good technique winning the freestyle stroke and consecutively making an incredible time of 34,05 seconds.

Botswana’s elite swimmer, Bonita Imsrovic was among the competitors though fielding not good results compared to her seeding times. Imsrovic competed on the just ended African championships in Congo Brazzaville.

“There was not much competition for me, but all in all it wasn’t a good performance as compared to what I did in Congo and Kazan” she said. She contributed her bad performance to fatigue and she also said she just started training for the league a week before the competitions.

However she applauded the gesture in which BSSA for hosting such event, she said such moments gives those who are younger than her a chance to feel on how it feels to compete at it plays a vital role before elite stage.

Imsirovic competed in the 50 and 100 meters both coming out as a winner for the Gators club. She recorded 1:21,19 minutes from a seeding of 1:20,41 minutes for the 100m breaststroke and 50m she clocked 37,01 seconds.

The biggest winner of the day was  15 year old Danita Blokker of Gators club, winning the 100m Butterfly stroke with 1:19,48 minutes, 50 meters with 30,54 seconds.

She also won 200 meters Freestyle with 2:25,87 minutes, 100 meters Freestyle with 1:06,73 minutes and the 200 meters individual medley with 2:47,00 minutes only to come twice to Imsirovic on the 100 meter Breaststroke accumulating 127 points for her club.

On the boy’s side, Chase John of Phoenix club won the better categories. Clinching 200 meters individual medley, 50 meters backstroke. The 10 year old went on to clinch 100 and 200 meters freestyle strokes.

Eight year old Abigail Jamu of Gators club proved to be a force to reckon, when she competed among older girls 50 meters breaststroke improved her time of 1:34,05 to 1:19,04.

Young Jamu said the competition was fun, though she did not get first prize noted that it was due to her love of the sport that she managed to improve her performance. She also said the sport requires dedication and passion, “I am happy to have played a part today, I hope one day I will be one of the best swimmers in the country” she commented.

Darrell Morton Programme Director from Dmss Gators, said he was happy and believes the event was successful.

“we are happy that almost five clubs have been able to attend the event, because we just came out of winter which means most of the swimmers were not so well prepared but their attendance was good” he said.

He said it took a big collective work behind the scenes to put up the event of the magnitude, applauding those who were engaged in making the event a success. He said because of lack of funding the volunteers were at minimal. Ends