Black Sands Swim club smashes records & brings 33 medals from Barbados

Winners from several events collecting awards. Photo by Black Sands Facebook page.

By Admin. Updated 8:51 p.m., Wednesday, March 6, 2024, Atlantic Standard Time (GMT-4).

Black Sands Swim Squad (BSSS) said its swimmers smashed four (4) National records and brought home 33 medals from the Barbados Long Course National Championships.

The event took place from the 27th February to the 3rd March 2024 in Barbados.

In a press release, the club said: All seven of the competing BSSS swimmers managed to get themselves onto the medal podium.

The press release said: “Kennice Greene won six (6) golds and silver and whilst doing so, broke her 100m freestyle National record, reducing the time from 1:01.93 to 1:01.09 minutes. She also broke the 50m butterfly record previously held by Shne’ Joachim with a time of 29.42 seconds and reduced it to a time of 29.25 seconds”.

“Matthew Ballah won three (3) golds and two (2) silver medals and also re-wrote the record books, breaking the 50m backstroke record, previously held by Brandon George in a time of 28.87 reducing the time to 28.78,” the release said.

“Brandon George won two (2) golds and three (3) silver medals and alsoclaimed a National record in the 100m backstroke, beating his previous record time of 1:02.47 and reducing it to 1:02.11,” the release said.

The press release said: “Abigail Deshong won two (2) golds, two (2) silvers, and three (3) bronze medals, whilst her younger brother, Kione Deshong brought home 3 golds, 1 silver and 1 bronze medal”.

“Kevern DaSilva returned home with 1 gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze medals and Seth Byron was able to bring back home 2 bronze medals,” the release said.

According to the release, BSSS Head Coach, Kyle Dougan expressed his extreme delight at the results by ALL of the swimmers and said “All seven swimmers swam extremely well especially since they recently attended the local Gallagher Invitational Swimming Championships. Their intense training schedule leading up to Carifta 2024 is extremely difficult, so to perform at such a high standard in the middle of very hard training is applaudable.”