By Neto Baptiste
The sport of swimming in Antigua has come a long way with athletes now ranked amongst the best across the OECS.
This is the assessment of national swimming coach, Wayne Mitchell, who is attributing the sport’s success to the “it takes a village” approach being undertaken by those within the fraternity.
“It is said that it takes a village, and I think we still that small sheltered community where everybody knows everybody and everybody’s name, and everybody feels a part of something, and I think that Ethan and all the other kids feel they are still a part of something. A lot of kids have started with very little self-confidence and issues concentrating and stuff like that, but it’s great just to see them mature out and start to get confident, and I believe it’s the village effect of Antigua where everybody is together in terms of that,” he said.
Mitchell pointed to the recent achievements of Ethan Stubbs-Green who won gold in the boys’ 13-14 age category of the 100 meters butterfly at the Carifta Swimming Championships held in Barbados in April, before going on to claim bronze in the 200 meter freestyle, as something to celebrate.
The young swimmer is currently in a top UK school honing his talent.
“Obviously he did so well that he gets scouted and he gets opportunities and he is now in the UK at a private school, Millfield, which is one of the top schools in the UK in terms of swimming. We started coaching Ethan at around nine or 10 years old and he only learnt to swim here. He went into the UK as the number one swimmer in the whole of the UK and he just had a meet over the weekend and he came first,” Mitchell said.
The coach, who is currently in St Lucia with the national swimming team for the OECS Swimming Championships, said going to this weekend’s championships brings back memories of when the country first started competing at the sub-regional level.
“I remember when we went to our very first OECS and in terms of sending a big team for the first time, and just seeing how St Lucia and Grenada looked in the water, in terms of how high they were and how fast they were swimming compared to us, but it’s safe to say now that we are probably leading in terms of progression, in terms of the amount of swimmers and in terms of results. We have the fastest kids now and the fastest results in the OECS region,” he said.
A 31-member team is representing Antigua and Barbuda at the ongoing championships being held at the Rodney Heights Aquatic Centre.