Jamaica will be sending a 32-member swimming team to the 24th staging of the Goodwill Swim Meet in Barbados between August 17-19.

The relatively young and inexperienced swimmers will get a chance to strut their stuff against their Caribbean neighbours ranging in age from eight and under to 17 years old.

The Goodwill Swim Meet is a regional swimming competition held annually in the eastern Caribbean, and this year will see the first participation by a Jamaican team.

The Jamaican swimmers will compete against Barbados, Suriname, St Lucia, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, The Bahamas and Grenada in a short course 25m pool.

Martin Lyn, president of the Amateur Swimming Association of Jamaica (ASAJ), said it was a pleasure to be invited and just to be able to field a team shows the depth of Jamaica’s swimming.

“It’s a great opportunity that the Goodwill meet will give our younger swimmers. In order to participate you cannot represent Jamaica at CCCAN or Carifta Games. So what it does is give the swimmers who are just below that standard to bring themselves up,” Lyn explained.

“This is the first time that Jamaica has been invited to go to the Goodwill Games so it is a great feather in the ASAJ’s hat, and the recognition of being invited is very good for us,” he added.

“I am proud as the president to be able to send teams all over, almost simultaneously. Because we have a team in China undergoing a complete two-month training, just sent a team to the CAC Games in Colombia, and we just send a team to CCCAN in Aruba and now sending a team to the Goodwill Games in Barbados, and it’s not the same people — so that shows the quality of our swimming has greatly improved for us to be able to do this,” Lyn reiterated.

The competitors who will represent Jamaica were chosen from a range of clubs using a selection process based on the swimmers’ fastest times achieved between October 1, 2017 and May 27, 2018.

The ASAJ is expecting the squad members, who are very promising swimmers, to make a mark for themselves in Barbados.