Swimming: 13-14 age group serves battles
What you need to know:
- Elsewhere, Kirabo Namutebi and her brother Tendo Mukalazi were largely dominant in the 15 and over age group. Their experience shone through as they hardly controlled their races without even needing to push for personal bests.
Historically, the most competitive category at the Uganda Swimming Federation (USF) Club Championships is the 13-14 years age group.
The category served interesting battles at the 7th Nationals held at Greenhill Academy, Kibuli but there were also some in the 11-12 group.
Jordan Ssamula, who missed the nationals last year, returned for Dolphins to give Aquatic Academy’s Akram Lubega a run for his money for the 13-14 boys.
Eventually only one point separated the boys as Lubega topped the group with 135 points. There were other contestants like Sailfish siblings Mathew and Arthur Mwase, Gators Peterson Inhensiko and Dolphins Malcolm Nahamya, who all did well to blow up the competition especially in the relays.
The general performance of the Dolphins boys in this category propelled them to the overall podium.
In the girls’ category, Altona’s Tara Kisawuzi, 13 with 156 points, dominated the butterfly and freestyle sprints to edge competition between her and the Aquatics duo of Karimah Katemba (147) and Rahmah Nakasule (134).
11-12 years
Kisawuzi’s teammate Abigail Mwagale beat a 100m backstroke disqualification and a 50m butterfly loss to teammate Paula Nabukeera to top the 11-12 girls with 142 points.
Gators’ Paloma Kirabo (123.5 points), who won the 100m back, came between Mwagale and Nabukeera (108) on the age group’s podium but Altona still dominated the age group as it had eight relatively brilliant swimmers in there.
Their boys Elijah Wamala (104 points) and Adriel Lumu (98) were also in the 11-12 top five but found insurmountable challenges in Silverfin’s Isaiah Kuc (150) and David Sine (140) while Ssango Kigundu forced his way in between them with 100 points.
15 and over
Elsewhere, Kirabo Namutebi and her brother Tendo Mukalazi were largely dominant in the 15 and over age group. Their experience shone through as they hardly controlled their races without even needing to push for personal bests.
Namutebi, in particular, used most of her energy to swim more events than usual to ensure Gators dominated the women’s 15 and over age group leaving her teammate Swagia Mubiru (126 points) and Silverfin Academy’s Karla Mugisha (124) battle for second place.
Mukalazi kept to the sprints as his team had enough ‘big boys’. In the 10 events he did, he only ceded gold in two; 200m individual medley and 100m butterfly to Adnan Kabuye.
10 and under
Another dominant swimmer was Jaguars’ Zarah Mbanga, who won nine individual gold medals in the 10 and under girls’ age group to amass 162 points, and was also a leading factor in the four relay golds in the same category.
For the youngest boys, Flash’s Jerome Matsiko with four gold and as many silver medals made 150 points to beat the Altona combination of Ethan Kunihira (123.5 and five golds) and Francis Kisawuzi.
