BVI swimmers returning to the OECS Championships after eight-year hiatus

TORTOLA — British Virgin Islands swimmers will return to the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States’ (OECS) Swimming Championships for the first time in eight years, when the 32nd annual meet is held in St. Vincent and the Grenadines this weekend.

The OECS Swimming Championships begin today and run through Sunday at the Shrewsbury Aquatic Center in Ratho Mill, St. Vincent. In addition to the BVI, participating federations are Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, Martinique, St. Lucia, Saint Maarten and St. Martin, St. Kitts and Nevis, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The BVI Swimming Federation — which had a swimmer compete in the 2016 Rio Olympics, just four years after the federation’s formation — had its program severely disrupted after the passage of Hurricane Irma in 2017, as the BVISF’s training base at Prospect Reef was destroyed.

“For us locally, it’s a big deal and the OECS Championships is where we started and to be missing for the last couple years, it was a blow to the local program,” BVI Swimming Federation president Elsworth Phillip told The Daily News. “We are happy that we have people still interested. We have young fresh talent, who are eager to show they’re capable of competing in the region, amongst the other OECS countries. In a nutshell, this is a big deal.”