Bermuda got its Carifta Swimming Championships campaign off to a flyer with four medals across the first two days of competition in Curaçao.

Having claimed bronze in the girls 15-17 400 metre freestyle relay during the opening day on Thursday, the team added an additional three medals yesterday with two days of competition remaining.

Leading the charge was Marleigh Howes who secured a pair of silver medals competing in the girls 13-14 200 metre freestyle (2min 14.06sec) and 100 metre backstroke (1:10.33).

Despite her success, the Warwick Academy student expressed mixed feelings over her accomplishment.

“I am pretty happy and quite shocked about my backstroke because I was ranked sixth or fifth, so I did not think I was going to get a medal in that,” Howes told The Royal Gazette.

“I have been training a bit more backstroke lately so I was excited that I did well in it.

“The 200 free was pretty good. It wasn’t a personal best and I was a bit upset with that. But overall it was still a good placement.”

The 15-year-old is confident of achieving further success going forward in what is her a second appearance at the championships.

“I think I am going to have a pretty good day tomorrow [Saturday] because it’s one of my best events, the 100 freestyle,” she added. “That’s my speciality event.”

Also earning a trip to the podium was Elanna Fulton who earned the bronze medal in the girls 13-14 50 metre butterfly (30:13) on her debut at the championships.

“I am so happy and so surprised,” the fellow Warwick Academy student said. “This is my first Carifta; I am so excited and wasn’t expecting it at first but it was amazing.

“This morning when I swam in the preliminaries, I was pretty confident with the race, it was just my finish. But we worked on it and in my warm up and I fixed my finish and was pretty confident I could get a medal.

“I just do what I had trained and was able to get my first-ever medal.”

Ben Smith, the national coach, is thrilled to see Warwick Academy high-performance programme swimmers reaping the benefits of the hard work they have put in training in the pool.

“Both of these girls have been training extremely hard together over the last year and the expectation was that we would come here and they would have an opportunity to fight and get into finals,” he said.

“Then once you get into the finals it’s about putting together the plan of how they were going to be able to get to the medal.

“Both of them followed their plan exactly and came away with the medal so we are really excited about where we are so far and looking to what we are going to be able to do tomorrow [Saturday] on day three of the championships.”

Bella Howes, who along with Imojen Judd, Myeisha Sharrieff and Adriana Argent secured Bermuda’s first medal, spoke of her pride.

“We are super excited about that and honoured to get a good result for the team,” she said. “We had a little bit of nerves going into the meet. But we recognise that we had been placed third going in so we knew we had a decent chance of getting a medal so we are very excited about that.

“We worked our hardest to get there. We all pushed really hard and are very happy with the result.”

Bermuda is being represented by a nine-strong team that also includes Brandon Adkins, Thomas Cechini and Connor Hupman. The team is also being accompanied by manager Shirene Fulton at the championships which conclude on Sunday.