USA-based T&T swim­mers Liam Car­ring­ton and Zuri Fer­gu­son are both tar­get­ing a suc­cess­ful T&T cam­paign on home soil when the 38th Carif­ta Aquat­ics Cham­pi­onships host­ed by the Aquat­ics Sports As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (ASATT) be­gins at the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va, from Sat­ur­day to Tues­day (April 19-22).

T&T last won the Carif­ta Swim­ming Cham­pi­onship ti­tle held un­der the aus­pices of the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees in 2010 in Kingston, Ja­maica to keep hold of the ti­tle won a year ear­li­er in Sa­vanet­ta, Aru­ba.

Since then, Guade­loupe won the next three edi­tions in 2011, 2012, and 2013 fol­lowed by the dom­i­nance of Ba­hamas win­ning the next eight of nine edi­tions in (2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2024 with Mar­tinique man­ag­ing to break the trend in 2016 while the 2020 and 2021 edi­tions were can­celled to the COVID virus pan­dem­ic.

Last year in Ba­hamas, T&T cap­tured 58 medals (24 gold, 15 sil­ver, and 19 bronze) to fin­ish sec­ond on the medal ta­ble, be­hind cham­pi­ons and host Ba­hamas among the 25 coun­tries while in 2023, T&T led by Nikoli Black­man, a three-time Com­mon­wealth Youth Games (CYG) gold medal win­ner, and Zarek Wil­son who al­so won three medals at the CYG and Car­ring­ton se­cured 54 medals (22 gold, 16 sil­ver, and 16) for 534 points to fin­ish third, be­hind cham­pi­ons Ba­hamas who cap­tured 85 medals (37 gold, 27 sil­ver, and 21 bronze) for 1,113 points, and Cay­man Is­lands fin­ished in the sec­ond spot with 53 medals (25 gold, 16 sil­ver, and 12 bronze) for 752 points.

This year, T&T will be rep­re­sent­ed by a 36-mem­ber team with Car­ring­ton, Fer­gu­son and fel­low USA-based Cather­ine Di­ef­fen­thaller ex­pect­ed to be at the front of the medal charge to­geth­er with Liam Roberts, and Zachary An­tho­ny.

Speak­ing at their train­ing ses­sion held at the com­pe­ti­tion pool in Cou­va on Thurs­day, an up­beat Car­ring­ton, 16, Fer­gu­son and Di­ef­fen­thaller were all up­beat about the lo­cal team's chances.

Car­ring­ton, who at­tends Bolles High School in Flori­da and ar­rived in T&T on Wednes­day night ahead of a first train­ing ses­sion with the na­tion­al team, is ex­pect­ed to have a busy Carif­ta meet as he has been en­tered in no few­er than ten in­di­vid­ual events and three re­lays.

Car­ring­ton is list­ed to face the starter in the 15-17 boys 50-me­tre back­stroke, 200m freestyle, 400m in­di­vid­ual med­ley, 200m in­di­vid­ual med­ley, 800 freestyle re­lay, 50m freestyle, 200m freestyle re­lay, 400m freestyle re­lay, 100m back­stroke, 400m med­ley re­lay, 100m freestyle, 400m freestyle and 200m back­stroke.

And look­ing ahead to the meet the T&T swim­mer said team ca­ma­raderie will be im­por­tant to the team's suc­cess.

A mul­ti­ple gold medal win­ner at last year's stag­ing of the 37th edi­tion in Nas­sau, Ba­hamas, Car­ring­ton speak­ing at train­ing at Cou­va yes­ter­day said, "Prepa­ra­tion has been re­al­ly good and I'm al­so swim­ming re­al­ly well.

"The team has a re­al­ly good shot at re­al­ly do­ing well this year and I'm just hop­ing that we can come out on top."

Com­ment­ing on the 36-mem­ber team, Car­ring­ton added, "It's a re­al­ly strong team, and I think if we can come to­geth­er and have great ca­ma­raderie we could re­al­ly pull through."

Per­son­al­ly, Car­ring­ton added, "I want to do well and make sure and medal in all my events that I com­pete in."

Fer­gu­son, who de­buted at the last Olympic Games in Paris, France said she was hop­ing to break some of her old Carif­ta records dur­ing the course of the com­pe­ti­tion in which she will com­pete in 13 events.

They in­clude the 15-17 girls 50m back­stroke, 400m freestyle re­lay, 50m but­ter­fly, 400m med­ley re­lay, 100m freestyle, 50m freestyle, 200m freestyle re­lay, 100m but­ter­fly, 200m freestyle, 100m back­stroke, 200m in­di­vid­ual med­ley, 800 freestyle re­lay and 200m back­stroke heats.

Fol­low­ing her first train­ing ses­sion at Cou­va since ar­riv­ing from the USA on Wednes­day, Fer­gu­son said, "I just want­ed to tight­en up my strokes and make sure and fine-tune all my de­tails, es­pe­cial­ly on my back­stroke, mak­ing sure I'm ro­tat­ing fine, and I have al­so been lift­ing weights as well to make sure I'm strong and pre­pared as well."

Asked what her goals over the course of the meet were, Fer­gu­son replied, "For me, it's to have fun and en­joy my­self, be­cause I al­ways race best when I'm hav­ing fun, and I'm hap­py and I keep the vibes high, and hap­pi­ness up and just re­lax and en­joy my rac­ing."

She added, "That works for me to race faster, and I want to bring those same vibes to the team and up­lift them and have them race their best."

Re­flect­ing on the Olympics, Fer­gu­son who is set to at­tend the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da un­der the guid­ance of head coach and for­mer Olympic gold medal win­ner, T&T-born An­tho­ny Nesty of Suri­name said, "At the Olympics I was ac­tu­al­ly the most calm I've ever been be­fore races and I'm try­ing to use those tac­tics and tech­niques to keep my­self calm, and low­er the nerves be­fore my races."

Di­ef­fen­thaller, 16, of Saint Pe­ters­burg Aquat­ics in Tam­pa Bay, Flori­da said she too has been train­ing a lot and has been try­ing to work on per­fect­ing her strokes.

Di­ef­fen­thaller, who will con­test the 15-17 girls 50m breast­stroke, 100m breast­stroke, 200m breast­stroke, and 400m med­ley re­lay heats with the aim of reach­ing the fi­nals added, "I'm just try­ing to do my best for my coun­try and hope­ful­ly the train­ing that I have put pays off."

In ad­di­tion to host T&T and reign­ing cham­pi­ons Ba­hamas, the oth­er com­pet­ing coun­tries are An­tigua & Bar­bu­da, Aru­ba, Bar­ba­dos, Bermu­da, British Vir­gin Is­lands, Cay­man Is­lands, Cu­ra­cao, Do­mini­ca, French Guiana, Grena­da, Guade­loupe, Guyana, Haiti, Ja­maica, Mar­tinique, St Lu­cia, St Maarten, St Mar­tin, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Suri­name, Turks & Caicos, and US Vir­gin Is­lands.

The re­gion­al swim­mers will be on show in the pres­ence of World Aquat­ics pres­i­dent Cap­tain Hu­sain Al Musal­lam, who is in T&T as part of a high-lev­el re­gion­al tour that in­cludes at­ten­dance at the pres­ti­gious Carif­ta Aquat­ics Cham­pi­onships

The vis­it to T&T is part of a grow­ing em­pha­sis by World Aquat­ics on ex­pand­ing the sport’s glob­al foot­print and im­prov­ing in­clu­sion and ac­cess in tra­di­tion­al­ly un­der­served re­gions and is part of a broad­er ini­tia­tive by World Aquat­ics (for­mer­ly FI­NA) to deep­en en­gage­ment with Na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tions, Olympic Com­mit­tees, and re­gion­al gov­ern­ments across Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

Join­ing the World Aquat­ics boss on the tour will be World Aquat­ics Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Brent Now­ic­ki, Trea­sur­er Dale Neuburg­er, PanAm Aquat­ics Pres­i­dent Mau­reen Croes, swim coach ad­vi­sor James Gib­son and T&T’s three-time World Short Course Cham­pi­onship medal win­ner Dy­lan Carter.

In ad­di­tion to T&T, the del­e­ga­tion will vis­it the Cay­man Is­lands, Mex­i­co, Pana­ma, and Aru­ba.