Cayman sends 34 swimmers to CARIFTA 2025

A 34-strong team of the Cayman Islands’ best age group swimmers are set to compete at this year’s CARIFTA Swimming Championships, being held in Trinidad and Tobago from 19-23 April.

A staple on the annual swimming calendar, the regional meet has served as the first stage of success for countless athletes who have gone on to represent Cayman and the rest of the Caribbean at the collegiate, world and Olympic level.

Last year, the 44-member Caymanian squad returned from Bahamas with a second-place finish in the overall standings and plenty of medals to boot.

However, several key swimmers including multi-medal winners like Jillian Crooks, Lila Higgo, James Allison and Connor MacDonald are now too old for the competition’s 11-17-year-old age categories.

Instead, this year’s team – which will depart Owen Roberts International Airport on Thursday, accompanied by coaches, chaperones, a team manager and physiotherapist on a charter flight alongside Cayman’s track-and-field team bound for their own CARIFTA Championships in Trinidad – consists of equal parts CARIFTA rookies and veterans.

Cayman Aquatics technical director Jacky Pellerin said that while this year’s squad may miss those swimmers who garnered “a substantial number of medals and points” at the 2024 championships, promising results from the on-island national championships in March could be a sign of good things to come.

“This year, we have a team that should surprise us,” he told the Cayman Compass.

Every swimmer is scheduled to take part in at least one event in the pool, while 12 are entered in the 5-kilometre open water race scheduled for 23 April, the day after the action at the National Aquatics Centre, in Couva, concludes.

With at least four swimmers of each gender entered in each age category, Cayman also has the chance to contest every team relay event, which could prove pivotal in deciding the overall country points and medal table standings.

Steve Broadbelt, the president of Cayman Aquatics, said it was “good to see the next wave of the younger generation of swimmers developing and coming up through the ranks”.

Pointing to the entry lists available via the ‘Results’ tab of the competition’s official website, Broadbelt noted that although some of last year’s medal winners have moved into higher age categories, several of the team’s swimmers still appear well-placed for success against their international competition heading into the meet.

His daughter Sierrah, 17, is among them, with top-seeded entry times in several events across multiple strokes, as is 14-year-old Lucy Butler.

The same is true of Lev Fahy and Lennox Turnham Wheatley, both 14, on the boys’ side of the schedule, as well as 17-year-old Dominic Hilton.

Several other swimmers are also seeded in or near the podium places in at least one event, including CARIFTA regulars Danny Kish, Luke Higgo and Riley Watson, youngsters like Liam Minneboo and Lauren Travers, and other rising stars such as Eli Bain.

Turnham-Wheatley has one of the busiest schedules, having entered in nine individual pool events across the four-day competition, including each of the long-distance freestyle races.

At CARIFTA, the 800-metre and 1500m freestyle are each contested in open age group events for athletes between the ages of 13 and 17. Despite competing against athletes up to three years older than himself, the young endurance star holds the quickest entry time over both distances.

Broadbelt, Butler, Fahy, Minneboo and debutants Travers and Will Westin, 12, are also each entered in nine individual events in the pool, with those tallies likely to increase when relays are accounted for as the action in Trinidad begins to unfold.

The Cayman Islands’ 2025 CARIFTA Swimming Championships team in full: