Calls for professional MoBay swimming facility get louder

Western Bureau:

AS THE Unattached MoBay swimmers prepare for another swim meet this week, they are once again crying for a swimming pool in Montego Bay.

Despite the absence of a proper swimming pool in the region, swimmers from the Second City continue to exceed expectations. Just over a week ago, young swimmers from Montego Bay put up a strong showing at the 2022 Karl Dalhouse Memorial Swim Meet at the National Aquatic Centre in Kingston. There were record-breaking performances in the small team’s showing.

They will be on show again in the 2022 Walter Rogers National Age Group Championships’ five-day swim meet at the National Aquatic Centre starting today.

The swimmers are forced to balance their training in less-than-ideal conditions between the Doctor’s Cave Beach and the pool at Sea Garden Resort when availability permits. The team is grateful for the support of the beach club and resort for their continued support of the sport in the west.

Mobay Unattached committee member, Lylibeth Eaton, is lamenting the Government’s lack of support for proper sporting facilities in the west and is saying that the region’s young swimmers are at a huge disadvantage.

CHALLENGING

“It (not having a proper pool to train) is very challenging. When they go to Kingston, they have issues. For example, they don’t know how to properly come off the blocks. We don’t have lanes either, which makes it difficult to practise their turns so they could actually do better times. We move from 12 metres to Sea Garden’s 24 metres, which is good and also the beach,” Eaton said.

“Even with the limitations, the children are doing so well. I think the Government needs to realise that they are the future and should put some effort into providing the facilities to aid their development and take them off the street,” she added.

President of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce Janet Silvera expressed her frustration on hearing the city’s calls for proper sporting facilities fall on deaf ears.

“It is high time some emphasis is placed and money spent on ensuring western Jamaica has sporting facilities built and maintained for the development of our young athletes. The young people in this part of the island are extremely talented but are forced to work with mediocre facilities that are not equipped to propel them on to the world stage,” Silvera said.

“There are many talented swimmers who have to be going from one pool to another and even the beach. For them to have no stability, then turn around and do so well and even breaking records, I would think is enough encouragement to see that there is a future. It shows that with proper facilities, they can do much better. So I am really disheartened as we have been calling for this for too long now,” she said.

She continued: “We do so well on the international scene, but if we are not careful, we won’t have enough of our people from this side of the country excelling. They are being held back because the facilities are not there for us to be the best in the country. Give them an opportunity because they are already excelling with the absence of facilities.”

Silvera is also proposing that if the Government alone can’t do it, then ways to partner with the business community in Montego Bay and western Jamaica, by extension, should be explored.

The MoBay swimmers are looking forward to improving their times during the upcoming competition in hopes of making national teams to represent the west and Jamaica at international events such as CARIFTA and CCCAN.