With the hope of discovering new talents and raising the next generation of swimmers, Love Nature Swimming Academy held the much anticipated swimming age-grade competition at the Lagos Country Club earlier this week.
The competition which the head coach of the academy, Ifeoluwa Abimbola, said is aimed to help bridge the gap and encourage all people to come out and conducive environment in a bid to help identify and showcase the good products brought by competitors of various age groups on Saturday in Lagos.
Speaking after the event on Saturday, some attendees lauded the organizers of the events for presenting such a great opportunity but expressed there is still more to be done, calling on the Lagos State Sports Commission to support the Swimming Association so they will be able to package young and upcoming swimmers.
One of the attendees said; “We have junior swimmers coming up in different clubs, different areas but packing them together we need the Lagos state sports commission to support the swimming association.
You have just said that we have different competitions in clubs but we need Lagos state especially since their swimming pool in Teslim is not in good order.”
The second speaker expressed her excitement about the competition creating a chance by which potential next-generation swimmers can be identified.
“It makes me feel good that they can identify swimmers from our competitions but then we still seek support because this is out of passion. It is not easy to put things together then if we get support from a lot of people then we can do this more than once a year then the children get the chance to improve then we can identify more swimmers.
Another one described swimming as a nice sport that can be utilized when it comes to survival and saving lives.
“Swimming is a nice sport that can one day maybe save your life or maybe save someone else’s life. And it is even like you overcome your fear of the water, it is a really nice sport to learn.”
Finally, the last speaker charges the Federation to get into grassroots swimming, identifying potential talents and investing in them to represent the country on world stages…
What I think the federation should do is to get into the grassroots, identify competitions like this and invest with them. Bring in corporate bodies to support competitions like this and by doing so you never can tell, we can see the Nigel Forbes here, we have a lot of swimmers’ untapped talents in the rural areas, in the riverine areas.
I mean what are we doing with all of that? We have people in the government that can get to the grassroots and competitions like this will help bring up the kids from the grassroots and we can have so much talent from that angle,” he concluded.
