2019: A year of several first's for Uganda Swimming Federation

By Donald Rukare -USF president

As we end our aquatics year 2019 and look to 2020, Uganda Swimming Federation (USF) registered a number of firsts and key milestones during the year. 

Reviewing, the 2019 USF calendar it is evident that we have been able to implement over 95% of the set-out activities.  Nationally, these range from development programs for officials and coaches, a media clinic as well as an anti-doping session for athletes and officials.

In addition, primary and secondary school events were held together with club and national championships. Furthermore, at the regional level, we featured teams in the CANA Zone 4 championship Windhoek Namibia, CANA Zone 3 Nairobi Kenya, Africa Games Casablanca Morocco and the CANA Junior Championships in Tunis, Tunisia.

While at the International level, we participated in the FINA World Championships in Gwangju South Korea and FINA World Junior Championships in Budapest Hungary.  We for the first time won two Gold medals and a Silver medal at the CANA Junior Championships in Tunis, congratulations to Kirabo Namutebi for doing us proud at the continental level.

We also acknowledge the excellent performance of team Uganda at the CANA Zone 3 championships winning a total 58 medals in swimming and 5 medals in Open Water, emerging second overall out of nine participating countries. We are extremely proud of you.

We successfully held the first-ever water polo league with 8 teams competing for honors as well as 2 masters events that continue to attract more swimmers. The first-ever open water event with 32 swimmers was held this year at Aero beach Entebbe. 

We held development coaching programs in Jinja and Masaka in abid to expand our reach and scope. We firmly intend to build on these activities going forward in 2020.

The aquatics family continues to grow as well, with now close to 30 clubs operational and 40 schools involved in mainly swimming and about 10 in water polo. The base of swimmers is also expanding with now over 1000 actively engaged in competitive swimming.

We would like to deepen this base with more swimmers as this will expand the talent identification arc for USF.

USF believes that empowered administrators, officials and coaches are critical if we are to sustainably improve our sport. To this end development clinics were held for coaches and some of our administrators attended sport administration courses run by the Uganda Olympic Committee/ Olympic Solidarity.

We shall continue to sharpen and hone the skills of our administrators in 2020.

We could not have achieved the above without the steadfast support of a number of our partners like FINA, CANA, Ministry of Education and Sports, National Council of Sports, Uganda Olympic Committee, DSTV, Meera Group, MidCom group. UMEME, Rwenzori Water, Davis and Shirtliff, Pool Doctors, GEMS Cambridge International School, Green Hill Academy, Excel Insurance,  Uganda Airlines, USF officials, Coaches, parents and the media.

I cannot forget to appreciate the tireless efforts of my colleagues, friends, and team, the USF executive committee. It is an honour and privilege to serve with dedicated individuals like you as we advance and promote aquatics in Uganda.

Looking to 2020 we shall roll out the USF annual calendar as well as hold our Annual General Assembly where we shall provide a technical and financial account to our members of what we did in 2019.

The Olympics will be the centerpiece attraction in July/August in Tokyo Japan next year. We look forward to our swimmers qualifying for the Olympics. We also shall be hosting the CANA Zone 3 Championships in Kampala as well.

We look forward to receiving the various teams from our zone as well as other zones of CANA.  I call upon everyone to join and support aquatics as well as swim for life programs, as water is our world.

Wishing you all a Happy Sporting 2020.