Gators pick vital lessons from SA

As the search for early exposure for young swimmers continues, long course competitions are fast becoming something Uganda cannot escape from.

This year, six clubs have been to Dubai. Gators just returned from South Africa where 12 year old Abdou Hakim Seck and Ethani Ssengooba, 15, were the biggest medal collectors at the March 20-23 South Africa Level 3 Regional Age Group Swimming Championships in Delville, Eastern Gauteng.

The long course competition attracted some of the top end clubs in mostly southern Africa but the Ugandan side Gators led by coach Joachim Sserwadda and team leader Jeroline Abuku, had nine swimmers.

“It is not to say that there are no galas from home but we definitely do not have the long course ones and they act as extra motivation for the swimmers,” coach Sserwadda said.

“They are also huge learning experiences for both the coaches and swimmers.

My biggest take away is that we need activation for our swimmers. The weather in SA was constantly changing and sometimes the finals were done in very cold conditions.

If you are not serious about getting a swimmer’s body moving before the race, they would swim cold.

You also need to work on the self-esteem and mental state of the swimmers. We had a relay, where perhaps we were worried and put a lower entry time for our swimmers but when they got into the water, they came first. Unfortunately, we did not bring the medal home because one jumped back into the pool in celebration and we were disqualified.

Seck also showed good mental strength because for every race, he was not on the start list. The organizers felt his times were too good for this level and recommended that he goes for the Junior level.

So we had to keep going back to get him on the list. They agreed but put him in the slower heats and it requires a swimmer with a strong mindset to come from such heats and qualify for the finals,” Sserwadda said.

The boys, who also included Elijah Mukisa, 12, Marc Kaliisa, 11, Aiden Immelman Abuku, 12, Benjamin Lutaaya, 15 and Jesse Mulondo, 14, finished ninth out of 70 clubs with 184 points while the girls’ team with just Paloma Kirabo, 14, and Lisa Bawole, 12, were 62nd out 68 clubs with six points.

Ssengooba, won his age group’s 50m free gold after qualifying from the preliminaries as top seed in 26.29 seconds while Seck had gold in the 100m and 50m backstroke events. He qualified for the finals of the latter with an impressive 32.53 in the preliminaries while for the former he qualified with 1:15.04 and won with 1:14.34.

He also showed good appreciation of the task at hand by lowering his 2:52.22 prelim time in the 200m individual medley to 2:46.60 in the finals to bag silver. He also won 100m freestyle bronze.

Seck then combined with Mukisa, Kaliisa and Akubu to ‘top’ the aforementioned 12 and under 4x50m medley boys’ relay but had quick consolation with silver in the freestyle one.