Trinity and Musaeus swimming champs

By Leslie FERNANDO

Trinity College with 324 points retained the men’s overall swimming title and Musaeus College with 161 points won the women’s overall title at the three day Senior and Junior National Aquatic Championship held at the Sugathadasa Stadium pool yesterday. Trinity College carried away the Dudley Senanayake Memorial challenge trophy, Musaeus College was awarded the SLASU Trophy.

In the Junior Swimming Section St. Joseph’s College emerged overall boys champions while Musaeus College took the girls title.

Yesterday two more new records were established by Mineka Karunaratne of AIS and W. K. S. Wickremarachchi of Polonnaruwa Aquatic SC.

National swimmer Mineka, the breast stroke specialist who won all three events she took part accounted for the first record in the 50 metre breast stroke ‘clocking’ 33:95.secs. to erase off the Sri Lanka and South Asian Games record held by Mayumi Raheem’s timing of 34:97 secs. Mineka also set a new record in the 100 metres breast stroke 1:15;56 secs and also won the 200 metre breast stroke 2:52.09. Young swimmer from Polonnaruwa Wickremarachchi set a new record in the Boys u-14 2004 free style - 2:14.72 secs.

Heshan Unamboowe of Trinity College who establish a new national record in the men’s 100 metres free style and won three more events won the Best Swimmer Award for the third successive year. Meanwhile Miniruwani Samarakoon of Gateway IS, Kandy, who won four events and equalled women’s 50 metre butterfly stroke was selected the women’s best swimmer for the second year in succession.

Royal National Waterpolo Champs

Royal College waterpolo team added yet another feather in their cap winning national men’s waterpolo title defeating the traditional rivals S. Thomas College by 8 goals to 7 in the final played.

For Royal it was their sixth title for the 2008 season. They were presented the David Vast challenge trophy. The Reid Avenue lads won the last nationals title in 2005.

Jubillant Royal coach Alok Prelis expressed his joy on his team’s remarkable performances. The team set a record winning the most number of titles in a single year.

The confident Royal side showed and continues their form taking the first quarter 2-1. Thomians did extremely well to level the scores 2-all in the second and third quarters but Royal took slender 6-5 lead. In the final quarter Royal struck 2 goals to Thomians two goals to achieve 8-7 victory. Royal were without their ‘star’ player Bilal Hassan who was on national rugby duty overseas.

Positional play, passing, collection, swimming and shooting of both teams reached a high standard. Shehan Dassanayake (4), Althaf Yakoob (2), Poorna Kankanige (1) and Yahan Samarajeewa (1) scored for winners. For Thomians D. C. De Silva (3) S. R. Warnapura (2) B. A. C. A. Perera and M. Wanigasuriya scored.

S. M. Ranasinghe and Nishantha Gankandage controlled the game under the supervision of Fareed Noor Ameen SLASU waterpolo controller.