The Bermuda Aquatic Swimming Association (BASA) will be sending the Island's best swimmers to compete at the Caribbean Island Swimming Championships (CISC) in Havana City, Cuba next week.

The team of 10 features Emma Franklin, Morgan Hopkins, Rebecca Heyliger, Eleanor Gardner, Rebecca Sharpe, Kiera Aitken, Lisa Blackburn, Roy Allen Burch, Nick Thomson, and Julian Fletcher.

They will be preparing for the championships in Florida before heading to Cuba on the June 26 where they will compete against 17 other nations.

Franklin will be up against some of the same swimmers she raced against at Carifta earlier this year, Hopkins was one of the golden girls at those games, while Heyliger is a past medallist at Carifta and will be looking to push herself against some of the top sprinters in the region.

Gardner heads into the championships on the back of a solid first year at Johns Hopkins University where she was part of the relay team that met the qualifying time for the NCAA Championships.

Sharpe is another who has been competing at a high level, breaking records and winning medals since she was an age group swimmer.

Last year she won three gold medals and set Carifta records and followed that up by competing at the Worlds in Rome where she had her first taste of senior competition.

Olympian Aitken has been competing in Spain this season and it will be interesting to see how she fares at CISC where she has not competed for a number of years.

Blackburn recently showed great form in breaking Jenny Smatt's national record and is showing the potential for what looks to be a highly successful season.

For Bermuda's male trio Thomson, Fletcher and Burch, it will be a question of how many podium finishes they can post.

Thomson, who will attend Florida State University in September, had a great season last year culminating in his first senior competition at World Championships.

Fletcher burst onto the scene two years ago with his golden performance at Carifta.

He followed that up by qualifying for World Championships last summer where he was able to take a breaststroke record.

This past season he has been training very hard at Southern Methodist University in Texas.

Burch is no stranger to international competition and recently broke both the 50 and 100 metre freestyle long course and short course records last year. The championships run from June 27 until July 2.

The BASA will also be sending a team of young swimmers to the Coral Springs Swim Club (CSSC) Long Course Invitational Swim Meet this week.

The team will feature 20 swimmers in a variety of age categories from 10-year-olds right up to 15 and over with some of the top age group and senior swimmers in the South Florida area taking part.

The event starts today and runs until Sunday.

National coach Ben Smith said: "Hosted by the CSSC at their world class facility, the Bermuda team will feature twenty swimmers, in a mix of young age group talent along with older seniors."

The youngest of the local contingent will be Mitch Gariepy and Josh Irvine, both of whom are entered in seven events in the 10-year-old category, while in the 11 and 12-year-old girls group Somer Froud, Anna Harrington, Shannon Hassell, Erica Hawley and Erin Haydon will all take to the water.

There is also an 11 and 12-year-old boys group comprising of Shannon Botelho, Eric Rowse, Tyler Smith and Jesse Washington, none of who have previously attended this meet.

The trio of Michelle Caza, Sophie Froud and Kiante Lightbourne will compete in the 13-14 girl's category while Philip Hagen and Jordan Rowse are the male representatives.

In the senior, 15 and over boy's age group, Alexander Brown, Kellan DeSilva and Nick Patterson will be returning to this meet and each will swim seven individual events, while Vaughn Rowse will be making his debut.