Triple gold medallist at the 2023 National Youth Games (NYG) Chioma Kanu showed her class at the opening of the season five of the Dolphin Swimming League held at the weekend in Lagos.
The Dolphin Swimming League is the first private school swimming tournament organised by Dynaspro Promotion in collaboration with Advanta Interactive and has been endorsed by the Nigeria Aquatics Federation as well as Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC).
Kanu, a year 10 student of Grange school, described the league as a veritable platform for her to hone her skills to be able to compete nationally with others across the country.
Kanu, who is also a national cadet champion said her dream is to represent Nigeria at the Olympic Games.
“I started in 2014 when I was in primary school, I started going for competitions and when I came to Grange that’s when I started taking part in the Dolphin League and other competitions.
“For now, I just want to finish school, I aspire to go to the Olympic level but at some point I also want to finish my schooling and also meet my siblings where they are,” she said.
Coordinator of the league, Oluseyi Oyebode said the tournament continues to grow each year. “When we look at swimming, it seems to earn more medal than any other sport. We’re about to take advantage of it then this is the starting point.
He added: “We are trying at our own level to get all these coaches engaged and we want to involve ourselves with a lot of training but there’s no amount of training you’ll give without exposure, it’s very important because you will not go and compete it now with UK or with any bigger countries without having the opinion or you have the orientation of what is presently going on over there and that has always been the edge and not only in swimming, in other sports too. That’s why they’re far better than us so for me we continue to advocate for coaches training not only on swimming because we’re losing them in all honesty. Some of our coaches too are finding means to get out of the country so if they’re going at this level, what do we have left.
A parent Ann Dankaro described swimming as a life sport. “Swimming is a life sport and in Nigeria we’re slowly catching on, all over the world you find that children are taught how to swim, it’s the first thing that they learn because it’s a life skill and we’re exposing our children to several activities and swimming is a very good sport that keeps them fit, keeps them healthy and helps them to compete with other children all over the world. So it’s an important sport that in the past many people thought Africans weren’t built to swim but we’ve seen that that’s just a myth, black children can swim as well as any other child internationally and that’s why we’re passionate about swimming,” she said.
Over 11 schools are competing in the season five of the Dolphin Swimming League.