The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

GLASGOW, Scotland — It was another Bahamas national record for Joanna Evans, but the teenage sensation from Grand Bahama won’t advance out of the preliminaries of the women’s 800 metres freestyle.

In her second event at the 20th Commonwealth Games, Evans clocked 8 minutes, 41.39 seconds for seventh place in her heat yesterday morning at the Tollcross Swimming Centre in another record-breaking performance that placed her 12th overall.

“My coach told me to try and hang onto the girl next to me and before 400 or 500 metres, she might try to pull away, so I just tried to hang on for as long as I could and it went as planned,” said the 16-year-old Evans of her performance. She smashed the previous national record – set by her in February - by 16 seconds.

As the race started, Evans found herself sitting in the fourth spot after the first 50m in 29.95s. She moved up to third at 100m in 1 min 01.42sec, 150m in 1:30.95 and 200m in 2:06.35. At 250m, she dropped back to fourth in 2:39.22, was fifth at 300m in 3:11.98 and seventh at 350m in 3:45.04. At the mid-point at 400m, she was sixth in 4:17.49.

Over the last half of the race, she maintained seventh spot, going through 450m in 4:50.48, 500m in 5:23.27, 550m in 5:56.22, 600m in 6:29.45, 650m in 7:03.05, 700m in 7:36.01 and 750m in 8:08.87.

Although she didn’t advance, Evans was thrilled with the fact that she had the next best highest finish on Team Bahamas behind Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace.

“That was a personal best for me by a mile and I finished 12th overall, I can’t ask for anything more,” said Evans, who is using the meet to prepare for the trip to Nanjing, China, for the Junior Olympic Games next month.

For the past two days as she watched the rest of her teammates swim, Evans said she just knew that she was poised for a big performance and after they all got into the semi-finals, she didn’t want to be the odd one out, not making the top 16.

“It’s a motivator for sure,” she said. “I’m racing professionals and this is just my first Commonwealth Games. I dropped all of my times considerably, so I’m not going to complain.”

She still has one more event to go when she competes in the women’s 400m freestyle preliminaries tomorrow, wrapping up Team Bahamas’ appearance on the final day of competition in swimming. She will be in lane five in heat one at 5.33am EST.