The Sri Lankan Synchronized Swimming team will depart to Singapore today to take part in the Singapore National Swimming Championships to be held from 24th – 26th November.
Sri Lanka Aquatic Sports Union is participating at the 12th Singapore National Synchronized Swimming Championships 2017 for the second time having previously participated in the year 2014. The tournament will commence on 24th of November and will run for two whole days up to the 26th of November at the OCBC Aquatic Centre, Singapore Sports Hub in Singapore.
This year the tournament has the participation of 13 Singaporean clubs, Seremban state team from Malaysia, New Zealand Development team apart from our squad. The Sri Lankan squad of swimmers have been picked up from our local National and Junior National competitions which was held in September 2017.
The team consists of 16 players; at the age of 18 the three most senior players in the squad are Shenaya Mendis, Bulani Perera and Jerusha Perera. Jerusha and Shenaya have represented Ladies College Colombo in the local tournaments while Buani Perera represented Vishaka. The youngest player in the squad is Rivinka De Silva of Ladies College who is only 13 years of age.
Sanjule Wickramage, Dehara Katipearachchi and Rovini Illukkumbara are assigned the coaching roles in the squad who will tour to Singapore.
One of the coaches speaking to ThePapare and stated that ‘The main focus of participation is to give exposure to our athletes since the level of sport in synchronized swimming is low, only a few leading Colombo Schools participate. So, our participation is developmental. We have also not participated in any international tournament since 2015.’
The team manager also added ‘Our expectation is to get rated by the international panel of judges and assess our standards while being competitive. This will help us to work on our development in future and choose future competition.’
