The Brazilian Confederation of School Sports (Confederação Brasileira do Desporto Escolar), or CBDE, has announced its roster for the 2018 World School Games, which are to be held in Marrakech, Morocco from May 2nd to May 9th.
The team was assembled based on event-winners at the Brazilian School Swimming Championships (Selectiva Escolar) held in Sao Paolo last week. Full results can be found here.
Swimmers may qualify for the ISF World Schools Championship through either School Teams or Selected Teams. To qualify through the School Team, each national school has a regional meet and then a national school championship. The winning team of the national championship within the country (Rio de Janeiro for both boy’s and girl’s this year) will have access to compete in the World Schools Championship.
The Selected Teams come from various schools and are selected from the national swimming federation. The team is made up of six swimmers and the only requirement is that the swimmers are in school. Coaches will be chosen from the State School Federations that produced the largest number of qualifiers, meaning that this year’s boy’s team coach will come from the Rio de Janeiro Federation while the girl’s team coach will come from the Paulista Federation (Sao Paulo).
The boy’s and girl’s rosters include the following swimmers:
Boy’s Team
- Antoniel Olochove dos Santos – Rio Grande do Sul
- Eduardo Oliveira de Moraes – Minas Gerais
- Filipe Gonçalves Pinheiro – Rio de Janeiro
- Gabriel Arteiro Nielsen Azevedo – Rio de Janeiro
- Gustavo Francisco – Paraná
- Lucas Santos Ferreira de Souza – São Paulo
- Luiz Gabriel Souza da Silva – Rio de Janeiro
- Matheus Zacharias Bides dos Santos – Rio de Janeiro
- Pedro Henrique Alcantara Costa – Rio de Janeiro
- Raphael Rached Windmuller – Paraná
- Victor Angelo Rocha – Minas Gerais
- Victor Melo Baganha – Minas Gerais
Girl’s Team
- Aime Louise Silva Lourenço – Distrito Federal
- Alexia Tavarez Assunção – Rio de Janeiro
- Bianca Carrai Loureiro – São Paulo
- Fernanda Gomes Celidônio – Distrito Federal
- Giulia Spinelli Soares – Rio de Janeiro
- Julia Martins Costa Peixoto – Rio Grande do Sul
- Luisa Amaral Leste Rosa – Minas Gerais
- Maria Fernanda de O da S Costa – Rio de Janeiro
- Nichelly Brandão Lysy – Minas Gerais
- Raphaela Nakashima – São Paulo
- Sofia Rondel – São Paulo
- Thacyane de Lima – São Paulo
In order to determine each roster of 12, the CBDE had to look at all the individual event winners and then make their selection. Given that there were 13 individual champions in the boy’s meet but only 12 roster spots available, one had to be eliminated. In the case of the girl’s team, there were only 9 individual champions–meaning 5 girls won 2 races each–which means that three 2nd-place swimmers in the girl’s meet will now get to race in Morocco. It is important to note, however, that even though the Brazilian School Championships contested the 200s of stroke and the 400 IM–which is why there were seven double-event champions in all–that the 200s of stroke and the 400 IM are not part of the ISF World Championship lineup.
The ISF requires that each nation register 2 or 3 swimmers per event for both School and Selected Teams, but “only the best two results will be taken into consideration.” If for any reason there are less than 16 swimmers entered in an event, only the ‘A’ final will be contested.
The World School Games does not contest the same events as most other major competitions. For instance, there is no 4 x 200m freestyle relay, nor are there 200s of stroke (save for the 200 IM). Instead, swimmers compete in only 50s and 100s of stroke and free, plus the 200 free for School Teams and the 200 IM for Select Teams. The event lineups for the School Teams competition and the Selected Teams competition are listed below.
School Teams events include:
- 50m, 100m, 200m freestyle
- 50m, 100m backstroke
- 50m, 100m breaststroke
- 50m, 100m butterfly
- 4 x 50m medley relay
- 6 x 50m freestyle relay
Select Team events include:
- 50m, 100m freestyle
- 50m, 100m backstroke
- 50m, 100m breaststroke
- 50m, 100m butterfly
- 200m Individual Medley
- 4 x 100m freestyle relay
- 4 x 100m medley relay
The inclusion of a 6 x 50m freestyle relay allows every swimmer from a given team to participate and square off against every other swimmer in the competition in a truly unique way, though none of the relays are mixed; they are all single-gender. Accordingly, School Teams and Selected Teams battle for separate titles.
American high school or college students who have participated in a study abroad program may have contrasted how amateur sports are structured in the United States versus other countries around the world. In order to bring together as many nations as possible while respecting one another’s governance of amateur sports, the ISF defines “school sports” in the following way:
“We consider School Sport as structured learning that takes place beyond the school curriculum sometimes referred to as out-of-hours learning. The teaching context for learning is physical activity.
The “school sport” programme (sic) has the potential to develop and broaden the foundation learning that takes place in the physical education. The ISF recognises (sic) the national body in charge of implementing school sport activities for 13-18 years old pupils.
At the national level pupils represent their school through local, regional and national championships. The school teams/athletes who win the national championship can take part in the ISF World Schools Championships of the concerning sport.
The school sport organisation (sic) system can be different from a country to another. Indeed the school sport system can be under the authority of the ministry of education, the ministry of sport, national structure or the National Olympic Committee.”
