The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

ARIANNA Vanderpool-Wallace has some unfinished business to take care of before her celebrated 2014 swimming season is over.

Still basking in her success as the first Bahamian to win a swimming medal at a major event when she took the silver in the women’s 50-metres butterfly at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland in August, Vanderpool-Wallace now has her eyes set on leading a strong Bahamian delegation to the Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games in Veracruz, Mexico, next month before she heads to Doha, Qatar, for the short-course FINA World Championships in December.

“My career is just kind of building and building,” said Vanderpool-Wallace, who is now based in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she trains under the guidance of her former coach at Auburn University, David Marsh.

“I think I’m in a very good place right now. I’m swimming faster than I ever swum before so I’m really excited going into 2016 (Olympics) to see where it puts me. My time at Commonwealth Games in the 50m freestyle, even though I came fourth, would have been top three in the 2012 Olympics. So I’m really excited and really motivated to work every harder now that I know where I really am.”

With the 22nd CAC Games on the horizon from November 14 to 30, Vanderpool-Wallace is confident that she can improve on her personal best time of 24.34 seconds for a new national record as she ended up fourth in her speciality in the 50m free in Glasgow before she came back and earned the bronze in the 50m backstroke.

“I really just want to keep getting faster and faster. I’m going to the CAC Games in a month now, so I’m really excited to see where my training has put me,” she reflected. “After the Commonwealth Games, I took about two weeks off and now I’m back in training, so I’m really excited to see where.

“Then this summer, we have the World Championships and that will be the last little tune up before we go to the Olympics, so I’m excited about that as well.”

The short course worlds run from December 3 to 7 at the Hamad Aquatic Centre, for which Vanderpool-Wallace qualified as a result of her performances at the Commonwealth Games.

Although CAC is not as a high profile meet this year as the Commonwealth or the worlds, Vanderpool-Wallace said the aim is to continue the trend of winning medals as the Bahamas has done so far this year, including capturing the title at the Carifta Championships in Barbados in April.

“I’m really excited about trying to bring back as many medals as the team can,” said Vanderpool-Wallace, who will be making her third appearance in the four-yearly games after going in 2006 and 2010. “I know the women’s relay team will be doing all of the relays, so hopefully we can get gold medals in all of the relays. That would be the biggest goal of all for us this year.”

With the short course worlds to follow two weeks later, Vanderpool-Wallace said she personally will be using CAC as a tune up to see what progress she has made before she returns to the global level to compete against the elite swimmers as she did at the Commonwealths.

“We are really getting our butt kicked inside the pool and outside the pool. I’m trying things that I’ve never done better, which is kind of crazy at the same time,” said Vanderpool-Wallace, who will be making her debut in the short course worlds, althought she did compete in the long-course World Championships in Rome, Italy, in 2009.

“We are going to see how it works going into December and then modify whatever we need to going into the summer,” she said.

After her graduation from Auburn University in 2012, Vanderpool-Wallace has been reunited with her coach Marsh, the current CEO/Director of Coaching at SwimMAC Carolina in Charlotte where she is training with top American swimmers like Ryan Lochte and Colin Jones.

“I think it’s putting me in a good place and they push me to be the best that I can be and hopefully I can push them to be the best that they can be,” she said.

“It’s really crazy training with them. Some of them are just genetic freaks - stuff that they can do is just absurd.

“Being able to train with them and seeing what they can do only makes you want to push to become a better person. I think sometimes when you get used to the routine, you don’t work as hard as you could. But when you see what other people are doing, it pushes you that much harder to do what they can do.”

Vanderpool-Wallace said she may never attain as many medals as Lochte, who has won 77 medals in major international competition (49 gold, 17 silver and 11 bronze) spanning the Olympics, the World, Pan American and the Pan Pacific Championships.

But for now, she’s just thrilled to be a Commonwealth Games silver medallist.

“I think my biggest goal was to put swimming on the map. It’s not that important how people see me. It’s more how people see swimming as a whole,” she insisted. “It’s really exciting that I was able to get a silver medal and then Joanna Evans went on to the Youth Olympics and got a bronze medal.

“So swimming is obviously growing in the Bahamas and hopefully we will have a big team going to the Olympics in 2016.”