O’Neal has passion for training

The Barbados Aquatic Swimming Association (BASA) has a reputation for hosting efficient, well organised tournaments at the local, regional and international level, and one of Barbados’ best top technical administrators Sonia O’Neal ensures that standard is maintained by training quality officials.

BASA’s Outstanding Senior Administrator for the year 2019, O’Neal is confident that Barbados will deliver once more when CARIFTA returns to these shores from April 11th to 14th at the National Aquatic Centre.

She noted that there is a growing interest in officiating and explained that BASA has already begun the process of training officials for the CARIFTA meet. She said a training session was conducted three Saturdays ago at the Aquatic Center and she was pleased with the response.

The outstanding administrator said she remains committed towards assisting BASA with competitions and ensuring they run smoothly.

“I take on the role of supporting BASA, ensuring the competition runs well. Getting the officials ready, ensuring that we manage the meet to world class standard. I also assist them in training the officials, I assist the swimming association in ensuring that we will always have persons to manage our competition to world class level, train them, so that Barbados becomes very efficient in hosting these competitions and that we showcase our people and present a good image of our capabilities.

“The parents are interested (in officiating), so that would ensure that when some of us move on to other things that swimming would not fall, that the officiating aspect of swimming would not fall. We would train people, put them in place to ensure that the standard we are so much known for would continue,” O’Neal said.

Currently the administrative director of the Barbados Cancer Society, O’Neal spoke about her love for swimming which she got involved with for the first time when her sons Christopher and Phillip O’Neal joined Alpha Sharks Swim Club in 1998. 

Sharing her journey in swimming at the administrative level, O’Neal proudly recounted her experiences saying, “My children learned how to swim at the Aquatic Centre with the Alpha Shark Swim Club. And someone in my first few months asked if I would get involved with the club and I got involved as secretary. That journey in the club led me to become president of the club (Alpha) and after that I became president of the swimming association.

“During that time, I also got involved in the officiating aspect of swimming. I learnt the swimming rules because at that time Barbados was actively hosting regional meets like CARIFTA, so it made sense to understand the management of competitions and therefore I got involved in other aspects like officiating.

“After I stepped down as president of the swimming association in 2012, I decided that my involvement then at that point would be officiating. So, I more or less put aside the administrative role and got more involved in the officiating aspect of swimming,” O’Neal added.

morissalindsay@barbadostoday.bb