Ntabazi’s push not enough to dislodge Astros

Match 14 of the second Altona-BSK (British School of Kampala) Swim League had something for every team. First Talons had Shafia Ntabazi display the form of her life to record personal bests in the two individual races of the day - the 75m butterfly and 125m freestyle - which for a change were done by only each team’s top five and four swimmers respectively.

Only Ntabazi, among the league’s top swimmers, achieved the feat getting herself crowned the ‘swimmer of the day’.

“Today, I came a bit motivated and the belief in myself has carried me to that performance,” Ntabazi said as Talons duly walked the individual races with 82 points while Colts managed 64 and Astros 52 at the school in Muyenga on Friday. However, her form did little to impact on the relays that followed.

The team managers, especially Colts’ Joshua Lule, had argued for weeks that the teams were not balanced. This prompted the league technical committee to prepare relays that would involve all swimmers across all strokes.

Astros bossed the 13x25m relays in butterfly, backstroke and freestyle to accumulate 240 points and 292 for the day. They should have won the breaststroke too but youngster Elijah Ssegujja was penalised for a freestyle kick in his round and the team was docked 20 points.

Astros’ strength was mostly in the final four lanes where exchanges from captain Paula Nabukeera to Tasha Kisawuzi to Ssegujja and then Chriton Kato proved devastating.

In between they had Ethan Kunihira, Francis Kisawuzi, Abigail Ssegujja, Jasmine Kasasa, Terrie Akampa and Liora Lumu battle hard to disguise the lesser efforts of their upcoming swimmers like Daniel Wasswa and Jaeden Kakooza.

With 260 points from the relays, Colts carried the day with 324 points to cut their deficit from the top to 243 points.

Talons were docked 20 points, amidst heavy protests, after captain Abigail Mwagale was adjudged to have taken off early in the backstroke relay but coach Musa Ssemanda has more than just the disqualifications in back-to-back weeks to worry about.

“We have some new swimmers and we need to guide them on some things like not gliding into the wall.

That will take time but we are sure that we’ll bounce back,” Ntabazi said.