Caymanian athletes and teams contesting six different sports – swimming, rugby 7s, beach volleyball, sailing, athletics and netball – descended on San Salvador, El Salvador, for the Central American and Caribbean Games.
Held once every four years since 1926, the CAC Games, running from 21 June to 8 July, are the oldest regional competition endorsed by the International Olympic Committee.
Beach volleyball finishes on a high
Kicking off the first week of action at the Games were Cayman’s beach volleyball duos of Chlouie Gaetos and Deajra Tulloch, and Jesario Ebanks and Casey Santamaria, who took to the courts at Costa del Sol from 21-26 June.
Gaetos and Tulloch bounced back from losses to Jamaica, Venezuela, Colombia and the US Virgin Islands in their opening matches with a resounding 2-0 victory in straight sets (21-10, 21-11) against Bermuda in the team’s final performance at the Costa del Sol courts. Those results saw the pair finish 15th overall out of 22 teams in the women’s event.
On the men’s side, Ebanks and Santamaria fell to defeat against Puerto Rico, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic before an improved performance in their 1-2 loss to Jamaica set the scene for a narrow 2-1 win over Haiti on 26 June to give Cayman’s teams two wins on their final day. The men’s duo also finished in 15th place in the overall rankings.
Swimmers put up personal bests and a national record
Next to compete were the Islands’ swimming contingent of Kyra Rabess and Connor Macdonald, who each notched new personal best times in three of their four events.
Rabess, who will join fellow Cayman Islands swimmers Sarah and Alison Jackson at the University of Northern Colorado to compete at the NCAA Division I level in the fall, began her meet with a seventh-place finish in the women’s 400m freestyle A-final on 24 June, clocking a time of 4:29.19. The following day, she returned to the pool to set a new Cayman Islands national record of 17:25.66 in the women’s 1500m freestyle, finishing just shy of the podium in fourth.
Making that performance even more impressive was the fact that it came a mere half-an-hour after Rabess had thrown down another personal best (2:06.82) for second place in the women’s 200m freestyle B-final. Rabess’ final event came on 28 June, where she grabbed sixth place in the women’s 800m freestyle final in a personal best time of 9:03.53.
Macdonald hit the pool for the men’s 1500m freestyle heats on 25 June, clocking a personal best of his own in 17:41.85. Qualifying for the men’s 400m freestyle B-final two days later, he improved on his time from the heats to go 4:26.83, a personal best that was good for seventh place. Macdonald moved up a spot in the rankings the next day, finishing sixth in the men’s 200m freestyle B-final, before closing out his event schedule with a new personal best (25.89) in the heats of the men’s 50m freestyle.
Rugby 7s grab big win
Cayman’s men’s rugby 7s squad began their campaign on 25 June with a loss to Colombia. But, just hours later, the team returned to the field to secure a commanding 50-0 win over Costa Rica behind a pair of tries each from Eddie Westin, Paul Westin and Justin Wight. Eddie Westin also buried three of his four conversion attempts to contribute 16 total points, while Cueme Parker and Freddie Robson chipped in with one try apiece to give Cayman its first win and the biggest margin of victory from any game in the tournament.
After falling to Jamaica (0-38) and Mexico (14-27), the team suffered a narrow 15-12 loss to Bermuda in its third game of the second day of competition, before a rematch against Costa Rica on the third and final day again went Cayman’s way to the tune of a 14-10 victory. While the final score in that match – which proved to be Cayman’s last, after a DNS from the Bermuda team during their match-up on 27 June – was much closer than the one two days prior, tries from Darien Montaque and Michael Peck proved enough to hold off a second half comeback from the Costa Ricans.
In the final standings, those results together saw Cayman take fifth place out of the pool of seven teams.
Sailors battle race postponements, Webster takes fourth
The same day as the nation’s rugby team recorded its first win over Costa Rica, Charlotte Webster got off to a strong start at her first major multi-sport event for the Cayman Islands.
Webster, who is also scheduled to compete at the Sailing World Championships in the Netherlands next month, grabbed third place in the opening race of the women’s sailing ILCA 6 division. Undeterred by multiple race postponements, she placed no lower than sixth in each of the remaining eight races over the six days that followed. When the final scores were tallied on 1 July (in sailing, the goal is to have the lowest cumulative score across all races), Webster finished fourth in a field of 10 competitors, just outside the medal placings.
In the men’s sailing ILCA 7 division, Cayman’s Andres McDermot – competing at his third CAC Games – twice finished in the top 10 throughout his own nine races. Saving his best performance for last, McDermot secured seventh place in his final race, earning himself 13th in the event’s overall rankings.
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