The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

Joanna Evans, the junior swimmer of the year, will head a 36-member team that is expected to travel to Bridgetown, Barbados, April 2-8 to defend their title at the CARIFTA Swimming Championships.

The team was selected Sunday following the final time trials at the Betty Kelly Kenning Swim Club over the weekend and the inaugural awards presentation at the Melia Hotel on Saturday night when Evans received her award from American Olympian Camille Adams from the visiting SwimMac Club.

Evans and five other members of their team from Charlotte, North Carolina, including Ryan Lochte and Cullen Jones, were in town last week to help celebrate Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace’s recognition by the federation as the senior swimmer of the year for her stellar performance in 2014.

Announcing the team, Bahamas Swim Federation president Algernon Cargill said they expect the team to win the title again. “It’s pretty much the same team as last year with 75 per cent of the team returning from last year,” Cargill said. “So that means that we have an experienced team that is used to the competition. So our focus is to go to Barbados and defend our title. Of course, we expect Joanna Evans, who already won an Olympic Youth medal, to dominate the 10 or 11 events she’s entered in.

“She will be joined in that age group with Albury Higgs, so with these outstanding swimmers named to the team, and all 36 of them have qualified, we certainly expect to have a team that will perform extremely well and they should represent the Bahamas very well in Barbados.”

As the defending champions, Cargill said they are anticipating that the rest of the countries will be gunning for the Bahamas, especially Trinidad & Tobago, the perennial champions, third place Aruba and the host Barbados.

“Trinidad has always dominated CARIFTA for the past several years until the Bahamas won,” Cargill said. “Taking a look at their programme, as well as Aruba, who was only 100 points behind us, they are all rebuilding their programme in order to win CARIFTA.

“But we are going to go there and put up a strong fight in Barbados and with the strength of our 15-17 girls and our 13-14 boys as well as our 15-17 boys, we expect to do very well.”

Andy Knowles, who heads the coaching staff made up of 2014 Coach of the Year Andy Loviett, Travano McPhee and Sarah Knowles from Abaco, said based on what he has seen, the Bahamas will definitely be in a position to repeat as champions.

“All of the pressure will be on us to repeat, but we’re going down there to try to do that,” said Knowles, who will be celebrating his 60th birthday on Sunday. “We haven’t seen the entries for the other teams as well, but with some good 12-and-under kids coming out this year, we are encouraged to go down there and give it a good fight.”

With Evans and Albury Higgs, who has moved up in age group, Knowles said the Bahamas will have a solid 1-2 punch to work with and there is a lot of depth in all of the other age groups. He noted that Lilly Higgs, in the 13-14 girls, has improved a whole lot, as did Victoria Russell.

As for the boys, Knowles said they are taking seven competitors in the 13-14 division and they are all tough and their senior division is just as balanced with none of the competitors swimming a bunch of races like Evans, which should help them to generate a lot more points.

He also added that the 11-12 boys are a new crop and they are looking forward to them performing very well.

“If we can get them to do what they did last year, I think we should be able to rock the stadium again this year,” Knowles said.

Cargill said a lot of the swimmers have been motivated by the presence of Vanderpool-Wallace and her SwimMac teammates. Hopefully, they will be even more inspired to go to Barbados and produce another spectacular performance to kick off the 2015 international season for the Bahamas.