CAMAGÜEY. - Ainat Alicia Nápoles Céspedes does not remember when, or where she gave her first steps; nevertheless, she can describe the moment in which she began to give strokes in the water. With five years, she entered the School of Aquatic Sports of Garrido neighborhood, with the only illusion of “learning to swim nicely”. With the time, the dream changed and at her entry to the EIDE Cerro Pelado, she already wanted to be a national champion of the so called synchronized swimming.

“I went to all the national competences that were summoned for the girls of my age. I reached several silver and bronze medals and they always had me among the athletes with perspectives of high yield, but they never dared to call me to the national team by my low height. I kept my hope up to the pre-university student; the award never came”.

On having finished the twelfth grade, she was one of the pupils with better academic results of her class, but she did not like any of the careers that they offered her.

“My friends were straining for studying Law, Medicine, Engineering … while to me, at that time, the only thing that fascinated me was my sport. My world was the swimming pool, the trainings, the competitions, I did not want to do another thing. Really that's why I decided to register in the Fajardo, to return to my only life”.

After postgraduate she was three years in the special area of the Ana Josefa School, in the neighborhood La Vigía, period where she discovered that her passion also was to teach. Then she returned to her special place.

To that little swimming pool of Garrido, where she was so happy, every day she comes to help to grow to tens of girls. At the head of the pioneer´s team of artistic swimming of Camagüey, she has faced two national tournaments. In her first experience her girls were located in the third place by provinces with seven medals, among them one of gold; and in 2018 nobody could overcome her four crowns and two subtitles. Her most finished work is the small Anniex Santoya, queen of the artistic swimming of the pioneer´s category in Cuba.

“Beyond her innate talent, the success of Anniex is due to the interest and the commitment in the trainings. She is one of the athletes that I received since she was six years old and she has already been four years next to me, that's why I could have perfected her technique”.

The contribution of her talented children impelled Camagüey up to the second place of the general ranking of the discipline in the country. After these achievements, many people hope that she assume the control of the sets of older athletes, but...

“I like to work at the first step of the pyramid, the so-called sports beginning. With the kids I feel at ease, because they always want to learn more and for this innocence that they have. It is very gratifying to see how they assimilate the teachings and they evolve up to performing complex routines. I have already had possibilities of training in major categories; I do not think to change, unless they designate me for needs for the direction of sports”, she says, bighead of her girls.

“Although we still lack a link of the education, I believe that in the province a successful future is guaranteed in the artistic swimming with the five-year-old girls. In these moments we do “magic“, since big part of the preparations of the aquatic sports in Camagüey is done out of the swimming pools, because the resources scarcity does not always allow to keep them full. Nevertheless, the strategy of reinforcing the special areas of these categories and of betting for young technical staff already yields fruits in pioneer´s and school games, and soon it will be seen in the maximum level”.

Alice does not avoid any topic relating to her work, for controversial that is. That's why we ask her on the inclusion of the males in practice of the artistic swimming.

“It is going to be a very difficult step in our education system along the social taboos that feed the machismo. If for the ballet academies the males' reception is complicated, one can imagine for a discipline that it has always been only for women. The obstacle will be the family, because the children are so pure that they do not assimilate these dogmas until the adults impregnate them. Here I have seen them with desire of imitating the exercises that the girls do to compete with them and to demonstrate to them that they also can. It will be a long way and full of obstacles, but I would like trying it”.

This way, with the feet in the water, Alicia, the Best Coach of Base of Cuba in the last 2018, lives through her passion.

Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez