COLE BAY--Two St. Maarten’s swim teams came together for a morning of competitive swimming at the third annual Ballerina Sweetheart Meet on Sunday. The water boiled with blue-capped Super Splash Swim Team SSST swimmers and red-capped Carib Swim Team CST swimmers including a number of 11-17 year olds who are training for the 2016 Carifta Games in Martinique this March.
Swimmers from 5 to 17 years swam 30 individual events and six relays in distances of 25m children of 6 and under to 200m, in all four competitive strokes and individual medley. Swimmers could swim up to four individual races and two relays. Competition was fierce and in five individual races winners were separated by mere tenths of a second.
SSST fielded a much smaller team than CST so team trophies were not awarded. Nonetheless, swimmers from both teams were represented on the podium. The high point scorers by age group were: 6 years & under girls, first Fien Bax and second Noemie Romney both CST; 6 years & under boys, first Maxime Gibbs, joint second Dax Henrique, and Nicolas Piazza all from CST;
Boys 7-8 years first Thomas ten Broecke CST and joint second Maik Croes SSST and Mats Bax CST;
9-10 years girls, joint first Sara Charbhe CST and Dhrishti Shahani SSST, third Emma Croes SSST, boys joint first Sacha Gibbs CST and Matias Piazza CST, third Kamal Sachdev SSST;
11-12 years girls, first Emma Marshall and in joint second Chloe Boecasse and Abbi Illis all CST,
boys, first Benjamin Pocovi, second Sahil Khatnani, third Paul ten Broecke all CST;
13-14 years girls, first Iris van den Oever, second Taffi Illis both CST, boys, first Rashad Peterson, second Nahel Ramanaidou both CST;
15-17 years girls, first Charlotte Backovic CST, second Abiola Dessout CST and third Ivyanne Louisa SSST.
The next meet is the Elementary Schools Meet February 28.
