Vice-president in charge of swimming at the Aquatics Sports Association of Jamaica (ASAJ) Hilary Brown Nixon says she was impressed with the country’s standout performances at the Pan American Aquatics Age Group Swimming Championships, which ended on Sunday in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The island’s swimmers continued their dominance this summer after amassing 49 medals at the Goodwill Swimming Championships in St Lucia earlier this month.

Team Jamaica, who had six swimmers, who competed in the age 12-14 category for boys and girls and one representative in the boys’ 19-21 category, finished with a medal tally of 30 medals; 12 gold, eight silver and 10 bronze.

Skyelar Richards received the High Point Trophy for the girls’ 12-14 category after finishing with five individual medals (two gold, three silver), four relay gold medals and a new national record.

Kia Alert was also dominant in the girls’ 12-14 age group with two new national records and six gold medals. Jessica Denniston and Kai Lawson also picked up individual and relay medals in the category.

Kaheem Lozer in the boys’ 19-21 category finished with three gold medals, while Adlai Nixon and Arush Rochlani finished with a combined eight medals in the boys’ 12-14 category.

Brown Nixon says the team’s success should be commended due to the high level of competition at the championships.

“It shows you the level of competitiveness of this age group meet that the kids really had to swim fast in order to get their medals and the medal count from a team of just seven swimmers was 30 medals, which speaks to the quality of the athletes. We, as the leadership of the ASAJ, the team management and the kids themselves are excited with the performances,” she said.

She also had high praise for the technical staff including Head Coach Lynval Lowe, who she says guided the team well.

“Coach Lowe prepared them in a couple sessions per week for the championships and it was really beneficial as we saw in the relays, which were almost perfectly setup in terms of the competencies of the kids to swim their leg of the relays to gold in all our relay performances, which in some cases the margins were tight but the kids prevailed because of the technical guidance from the team management.”

Jamaica finished fourth in the overall table in the 12-14 categories with hosts Puerto Rico, Peru and Aruba getting the top three spots.