A team of Camana Bay Aquatic Club (CBAC) and Stingray Swim Club (SSC) swimmers, their coaches and a support group of parents travelled to

Toronto earlier this month, to compete in the 13th Annual Mega City Short Course Special and North York Aquatic Club (NYAC) 29th Annual Youth Cup, both of which took place 1-4 December 2011.

Mega City is more of a developmental meet for newer, emerging talent; while the Youth Cup is an international high calibre swim meet for  competitive swimmers ages 11 to 17. Both meets are highly respected within the international youth swim circuit. This year the two meets were held at the Etobicoke Olympian pool, to accommodate the more than 1200 swimmers from across Canada, as well as the 32 Cayman Islands swimmers.
Mega City highlights saw younger swimmers make significant strides toward their individual goals. “For some of the younger swimmers, this was their first taste of competitive swimming abroad,” said CBAC coach Katie Lambert. “There were approximately 850 swimmers in the Mega City and some events had over 185 swimmers competing in them. We had 26 swimmers compete altogether, and all achieved personal best times.” This included Lois Moody, 14, who placed 1st in the 100-metre Butterfly with a personal best of 1 minute, 17.54 seconds and Isabella Tognazzo, 13, who placed 1st in the 100-metre Backstroke with a personal best of 1 minute, 16.65 seconds. Kavanagh Lambert, 11, placed 3rd in the 50-metre Breaststroke with a time of 41.55 seconds and Drew Milgate, 12, placed 3rd in the 50-metre Breaststroke with a time of 43.21 seconds. CBAC had a total of 32 top ten finishes over the weekend, leading the team to place 6th overall against 12 swim clubs.

Six swimmers from CBAC and SSC also participated in the Youth Cup. CBAC had two swimmers in the Youth Cup, and one of them – Coral Tomascik – was also a member of the Ca

yman Islands Representative Team. “The Youth Cup was a very fast meet with many talented swimmers,” said Coach Katie. “Both Danielle Boothe and Coral Tomascik had a total of ten personal bests between them; Tomascik, 14, swam a personal best of 28.39 seconds in the 50-metre Freestyle to place 9th and Boothe, 15, took three seconds off her personal best in the 100-metre Breaststroke to place 8th.

SSC members of the Representative Team were brothers Geoffrey and Simon Butler and Alex and Iain McCallum. All four brothers had personal bests in multiple events with Geoffrey placing 9th in the 15-17 age group, 400-metre Freestyle and finishing his 200-metre Freestyle in under two minutes for the first time; Simon reached his first final in the 400-metre

Freestyle and finished 8th overall; and both Iain and Alex had personal bests with Alex knocking 4 seconds off his 200-metre Backstroke. National Coach Dominic Ross accompanied the SSC swimmers swimming for the Representative Team.