New Carrollton tops Bannister in Prince-Mont swim meet

Last Saturday morning when the Bannister Swim Team was upended by host New Carrollton Recreation 284-139 in Prince-Mont Swim League action, wins may have been difficult to attain for the Barracudas but moral victories were numerous.

Bannister (1-2) first-year coaches Christianna Johnson and Kenneth Brown, both of whom were former Barrracudas, commended their youthful squad for competing against a larger one. Bannister is in the Prince-Mont divided E/F division and the Barracudas were technically swimming one level up against New Carrollton, a former Division B champion two decades earlier.

“A lot of the kids have really made a lot of progress this season,” said Johnson, who is also the swim coach at St. Charles High School. “We’ve got a small team, but we have a lot of kids that work hard and they want to get better. That’s really the main goal the rest of the season. We just want the kids to keep improving in all of their events.”

Bannister opened the meet by taking the 15-18 boys’ 200-meter medley relay (2:34.19) with the quartet of Terry Bellamy, Chris Brown, Timothy Brown and Donald Uzoukwu. Chris Brown also won the 15-18 boys’ 50 butterfly (32.40) and was later second in the 100 individual medley (1:21.94). A recent St. Charles graduate where he was member of the Spartans’ 3A State runner-up boys basketball team, Brown now enjoys being mentored by his older brother.

“We’ve been swimming since we were kids,” said Brown, who is headed to CCBC-Dundalk for basketball this fall. “It’s always been something that we did for fun. We both swam for Bannister for a long time. Now he’s one of the coaches so I get to benefit from his coaching.”

Bannister’s Adrian Uzoukwu took the 13-14 boys 50 free (43.41), 50 breaststroke (1:05.50), Hadley Willemin won the 9-10 girls’ 25 breaststroke, (30.28), Grace McLeod captured the 9-10 girls’ 50 back (28.96), A’Minah Washington won the 13-14 girls’ 100 IM (2:12.21) and Timothy Brown took both the 13-14 boys 50 back (43.77) and 100 IM (1:41.06).

In other Prince-Mont action involving Charles County teams, Hawthorne Country Club (3-0) remained undefeated by upending PGP 327-266; Smallwood Village (1-2) upended Accokeek 312-253, while Westlake Village lost to West Laurel 292-261.