Over the past five years, swimming has become one of the fastest-growing sports disciplines in Ghana.
Before this evolution, swimming in Ghana was mostly a quarterly festival, including excursions and sightseeing, providing an exciting escape from life's complexities for many families.

Since last October, we have made frequent trips to Accra every month for meetings. Though costly, these trips have had a positive impact on my program and my club’s performance.

Swimming is a very important social development tool in the hands of its stewards, wherever it is practiced – aesthetics, grace, grit, achievement, personal development, individual assessment, social cohesion, social bonding, camaraderie, and more.

Swimming, as I have come to know it, is a driver of academic excellence and prowess.

[https://news.griffith.edu.au/2013/08/13/swimming-a-smart-move-for-children/].

Swimming as a business has supported many young individuals – like myself – to afford the opportunity of building brands or clubs, all in a bid to bite a piece of the pie that this provides. It has provided the platform for a few athletes, both locally and internationally.

Opportunities aside, governance of the sport has improved too.

From a mostly non-competitive culture, we are now beginning to accept extracurricular activities, while still following a fixed calendar.

However, this seemingly smooth movement has produced a huge existential threat, which threatens the very structure of Swimming as practiced in Ghana.

Unclear career paths

But while children swim all year round, transitioning through the age categories, what are the benefits for life after these sacrifices? Where do they go from here?
What is the structure for them to get to the top level?

For most parents, it may not be the financial sacrifices for trips, new suits, swim camps, and extra arrangements.
These are costs they would have borne anyway, probably, for something or experiences that offer little in value going forward, but where will my child end up, should they continue to perform at a high level?

Take Ghana’s flagship, most dominant project in World Swimming, the revered Abeiku Gyekye Jackson. Like many swimmers, his dream was to reach the Olympics. World Aquatics development benefactor, a national athlete, well-respected in the swimming community, made friends with big names, and many more.

What opportunities can be explored from this, as a case in point – think of Adam Peaty’s AP Series. British Swimming, in collaboration with Adam’s team, has carved out a flashy project to bring to bear the opportunities and prospects of competitive swimming.

What career development platforms won’t cherish the immense experience of such an athlete? What school projects can the federation, in partnership with Ghana Education Service, for example, promote the role of extracurricular activities, and what heights can this take you?

What about sponsorship and ambassadorial deals? I have not seen a country’s athlete at the top tier, with such prospects both for the federation and the athlete, not supported by at least the sports federation to explore deals of mutual benefit.  

Consider our bright swimmers who came to the limelight in recent times, and have had their progress cut short due to School. What then? Continue swimming or not? High performance or hang in there?

High performance is a very difficult, complex road that, if cut short, will only take an extraordinary mental fortitude to take again. So, they tag along with a feeling of guilt weighing down on them as they post ‘slower times’ than their juniors, who are very much swimming into that conundrum.

This is the time we need strong leadership, not just that, but critical thinking leaders, in our federation, club system, and associations, to tackle this existential threat, and open this beautiful sport of ours, so we can properly connect to the global community and explore the benefits.

This piece is not to point out problems and profess knee-jerk solutions to a problem that cannot be solved with simple words. It is to point out to all of us the silent yearns of Coaches, Parents, and Swimmers who are sold out to the sport, yet cannot see it in their futures!

It is to show us we need each other for the future of what we do – to respect the contributions from every stakeholder – and cause a real change – not to seem, ignoring away every concern a stakeholder voices.
It is to prick us to begin to think inclusively, selflessly, for this beautiful community to continue to thrive, support, and grow beyond adrenaline-dopamine rush.

Coach Gyamfi,

African Sharks Swim Team