21 Feb 2016

Gaborone Aquatic Club (Water Babies) director, Debbie Rouse has hailed the Botswana Swimming Sports Association (BSSA) 3rd swimming gala as a success after recording the highest participation since inception.

The swimming gala is the first event on this year’s BSSA calendar and is an honorary event to the late Bev Bell, hence named Bev’s Memorial Gala.

In an interview, Rouse, also event organiser said that was the first time the gala had attracted a big number of swimmers.

“It has been a phenomenal day and there has been a lot of effort from swimmers. It is good to say swimming has been developing at such rapid rate. In a short space of time growth and development have been unbelievable,” she said.

She highlighted that having 187 swimmers participating was clear testimony that swimming was headed the right direction.

She noted that they could have recorded a higher number of participants but that did not happen because most of private schools students were on mid-term break.

“Despite that private schools were on midterm break, it was good to see a lot of swimmers coming out to take part in the gala having last gone into the pool last year early December. This gala attracted swimmers across different ages, from under seven up to 25,” she said.

Further, she noted the third gala was part of preparations for the team that would compete at the Confederation Africaine de-National Amateur (CANA) Championships billed for Mauritius in April this year.

On other issues, Rouse indicated that sustaining the girl child development from a younger age to elite stage was a challenge.

Another challenge, she said was pressure on young athletes being pushed to do more, adding however “by the age of 13 most of the kids then end up losing interest.”

Instead, she said there was need to look at the long term athlete development. “We need to allow our kids to develop passion in swimming. We need to commit them at the age of 16 and maybe 17. Allowing kids to have a choice on their preferred sport at an early age is the way to start,” she explained.

Meanwhile, the pair of Reitumetse Ebineng and Brandon Rouse of Water Babies, are part of the selected team to compete at the CANA.

Reitumetse, 12, expressed her excitement for being part of the team that would represent the country at the prestigious event.

Having been swimming from the age of three, she said her ambition was to be one of the top swimmers in the world and win medals for the country. 

“My best events are back and butterfly strokes, which I have a PB of 37:07s and 37:43 respectively,” she said.

On the other hand, nine-year-old Brandon said going to the CANA would be his most exciting moment thus far in his swimming career.

He was also hopeful that he would to learn new things out of the competition to better his performance. ENDS