The Sea Bees Swim Club is gearing up for this weekend's CARIFTA Time Trials, which will determine who will have a spot on the coveted national team and represent The Bahamas at CARIFTA 2012 to be held at the Betty Kelly Kenning National Aquatics Center, April 12-15, 2012.
The club, in a total of 94 swims, achieved 83 season's best times (88.2 percent) and 68 personal best times (72.3 percent) for the 2011/12 swim season thus far. Also, the club has less than 60 swimmers, 25 percent of which are in college abroad and in the club's 'Learn to Swim' program.
"Our swimmers have shown tremendous improvements in swim times, over the past year," said Sea Bees' coach Lucas Leite. "This was evident at CARIFTA 2011 when we had the most swimmers from a single local club qualify - 10 in total. For a small club like ours, this is a great achievement," he said.
Like the story of 'The Little Engine That Could', the club's swimmers have pushed forward, despite not having as much time in the water due to the cold weather.
"We have compensated with land training on the days when it is too cold to swim and that has proven to be a success. A number of our swimmers swam personal bests in the Dolphin meet last weekend and we're confident they will perform well at the Time Trials," Coach Lucas said.
The Sea Bees Swim Club placed second in the 2011 RBC Nationals, which was no small feat considering the club's membership compared to Swift Swimming, the defending champions, and Barracudas Swim Club, which has had the most wins since the inception of nationals. Despite its small membership, the Sea Bees Swim Club has some of the highest number of individual champions and records broken at nationals among all of the clubs. The club also has one of the smaller memberships among all of the clubs, which speaks well of their quality and efficiency.
The club is confident it will have a number of swimmers representing The Bahamas at CARIFTA 2012. The Sea Bees club trains at The College of The Bahamas (COB) under the guidance of Lucas Leite.
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