By Franklin Kaweru and Grace Kemigisa

Copyright kawowo

After a year of races, events, points gathering, and all things swimming, the curtain comes down on the 2025 Uganda Aquatics swimming League this weekend, the 20th and 21st of September 2025, at King’s Park Arena in Bweyogerere.

This is the third and final leg of the league that starts in February, then breaks and returns in April, with the last leg usually happening in September.

This final leg of this year’s league is expected to have nearly 400 swimmers taking part in six events: 1500m Freestyle, 100m Butterfly, 200m Backstroke, 100m Freestyle, 50m Breaststroke and 100m Individual Medley.

The league, unlike the galas, focuses on individual swimmers. Therefore, the swimmers don’t compete in a club but as individual swimmers to earn and accumulate individual points. The number of swimmers in the league is quite big, more than 600 swimmers; but since the school term 3 has just opened, some swimmers have just returned to school and wont be able to join the rest for the competition.

This particular leg of the Uganda Aquatics Swimming League comes just before the Africa Zone 3 Aquatics Championships, where Uganda will be participating too. This is a good opportunity for Uganda Aquatics to test and see the readiness of the selected swimmers as they also fine-tune and encourage them to represent the country very well.

The Uganda Aquatics Swimming League is a new feature on the Uganda Aquatics calendar, running for the second consecutive year. The league was introduced to allow swimming athletes to compete for the entire season or entire year and during the league the different swimming events are spread throughout the 3 legs; so, that swimmers can have an opportunity to swim in all the different events all year round. Unlike how it is at galas, where all events are swum and swimmers choose which ones where they perform best.

With the league happening throughout the year, the swimmers are not idle if no galas are happening; Idle time for a swimmer, obviously, is not very good but also the reason the league is spread out is to prevent instances of over-competing, because that would also tire the swimmers out.

The Swimming League should not be confused with the Nationals; they are two different features on the Uganda Aquatics Calendar. The Nationals are an annual one-time event that happens over a four-day or five-day spell, with all events swam within those days; swimmers are graded and awarded based on their performance in each event.

For the league on the other hand, it is spread throughout the year with events broken down into two-day races on each leg; with swimmers accumulating points throughout the season.

Like it is in other sports which have leagues, where people play home and away through the year and then climax with the team with most points winning. However, because of the uniqueness of swimming, it can’t be done like in other sports, so the broken-down league is the closest to that whole year of active swimming. Also, since the league is throughout the year it allows swimmers to continuously prep for specific events every time, which helps them not just in doing well in the league but also in improving their swimming and times.

Moses Mwase, the President of Uganda Aquatics, states that “The league results are also used to select swimmers for regional and global events; because it’s a national competition, and people can make new national records, people can, you know, do everything that we do in Nationals.”

Commenting on the format and how swimmers earn points, Mwase says; “First of all, athletes are swimming individually, they rack up points on an individual basis, because we want them to test their abilities against specific events, but not necessarily in a team setting. As a matter of fact, we don’t have relays in the league. The relay events, which are team events, are only restricted to nationals and other galas or championships.

“So when a swimmer comes in the first leg, which is in February, they swim, they get points the same the other legs; and every leg has got different events. Leg one has got different events so does leg two and leg three. But the difference is that we want all the events that are on a swimming calendar to be included in one of the legs, so that a swimmer has an opportunity to swim in all the events that a swimmer possibly can swim. Obviously, they don’t swim all of them. But if you are a swimmer that specialises in 100m free, we would expect you to do 50 free, 100 free, maybe 200 free and if you can push it, maybe 400. Some are not long distance, depending on how a swimmer is being coached, some are mid distance and short distance, others are long distance and mid distance. So, again, they’ve also had to leverage on their ability, but it’s really individual. It’s not a team event.”

On eligibility of swimmers Mwase notes, “eligibility is for swimmers who are on our database and swimming for a club. Basically, you have got to be in our database as a swimmer. We have also put minimum points, minimum qualifying standards, because we don’t want anybody to show up, otherwise we will have numbers that are difficult to manage. But also, because we are trying to improve swimming, we are requiring our athletes to work hard and meet a minimum qualifying time. If they don’t make that minimum qualifying time, then we need them to wait until they are ready. And of course that has come with its own challenges, in the sense that the ones who are not making the minimum qualifying times need to find other alternative competitions where they will swim; and we encourage those ones to maybe concentrate on swimming in club events, because we have a number of club events, which are not at a national level, but at a bit of a lower standard. But we are also working on putting what we call motivational times.

“We had these until about 2020, and then COVID caused a bit of a disruption. We have reviewed the motivational times as well. We have A times, we have B times, B plus, triple B, A plus, triple A. Basically, a swimmer should gauge themselves on how people are swimming on the world standard. We can have people winning medals, winning cups, but if you are not gauging yourself with respect to how people are swimming on the world standard, it doesn’t make you very competitive. We are competing with the whole world, not only ourselves.”

Well, the final leg of the 2025 Uganda Aquatics Swimming League is on this weekend and the president encourages people to come in huge numbers and enjoy swimming. However, for those who can’t make it to King’s Park Arena, the league may have a live stream on the Uganda Aquatics YouTube channel.

The 3rd leg of the 2025 Uganda Aquatics Swimming League happens this weekend, 20th and 21st September at the King’s Park Arena in Bweyogerere.