At first, Sasha Klein seems your normal 11-year-old. The blond Antilles School sixth-grader gets up at 6:15, has breakfast, goes to school, gets out at 3 p.m. But, after that it’s all business.
The champion swimmer heads to the St. Thomas Swimming Association pool at Nazareth for two solid hours of swim practice four or five days a week. On the afternoons she isn’t in the water, she is taking Hebrew lessons, which she alternates on Saturdays.
Klein has a goal firmly set in her sights – representing the Virgin Islands in the 2016 Olympics in Brazil. Not a modest ambition, but she is a determined young lady.
A member of the St. Thomas Stingrays and the V.I. National Swim teams, Klein returned from
Barbados last month where she competed in the CARIFTA Aquatics Championships (Caribbean Free Trade Association) in Barbados last month, where she got her first taste of the big time.
Klein is the youngest swimmer ever to compete in the games and only the second swimmer from the island to swim in the event in the last 17 years. Stingray team swimmer Julianna deHaas, then 13, entered the meet in Kingston, Jamaica last year, marking the first time since 1992 that St. Thomas was represented in the prestigious match.
The competition was intense, Klein says. The swimmers competed for four days with some 300
participants representing 22 regional countries from Bermuda to Surinam.
She swam in five events, posting personal best times in all of them and placing in the top ten in the 11-12 age group overall.
Though she didn’t come home with a medal, she gained experience. Because of her performance, she is qualified to return to the CARIFTA meet next year.
She says she "feels good," about the experience, a marker on her road to Brazil.
"Even though I didn’t make the finals," she says, perfectly unchastened, "next year my goal is to be a medalist and I feel confident that I will make it."
And that attitude, it is said, is what winners are made of.
Though Klein is a perfectly poised young lady, she is fallible; she, after all, still a 11-year-old. Talking about the CARIFTA meet, she says, "It was fun. I was excited. But, at first, I was really nervous, thinking I’d be one of the worst. This was my biggest meet yet."
However, when she hit the water, her worries evaporated.
Though she didn’t mention it, Klein is the Stingrays Swimmer of the Month for qualifying for the CARIFTA championships.
She took first place in the girls 9-10 age group last December, the first time a championship meet was held on St. Thomas, and broke a 30-year-old record in the 50-meter freestyle.
In the past, she has set three records in the 8-and-younger group and has won first place in the V.I. Swimming Federation Championships for both short course and long course for the last three years in her age groups.
Like many local youngsters, Klein grew up in the water.
"I think I was around two months old when I was first in the water,"she says. Her father, John Klein, says Sasha was in a water exploration class when she was four months old.
"I joined the Stingrays swim team as soon as there was water in the Nazareth pool," she says. "I was around seven then," Klein says. "And I just loved it."
Out of the water, Klein maintains an A average at Antilles. Her goals are no more modest in school than they are in the water.
"I love language," she says. "I’m taking first year Latin," she says. "Next year we’ll be doing translating."
And who are her heros?
"You mean my role models?" she asks. "Julianna (deHaas) for sure, and the ice skater, Sasha Cohen, after all she’s been through. (Cohen didn’t qualify for the 2010 Olympics because of injuries.) "And, of course," Klein says, "Michael Phelps."
She has a rigorous summer ahead of her. She will attend the U. S. Naval Academy swim camp in Annapolis, MD, for the third straight year.
Now, how about the Olympics?
"I know it will be a lot of hard work, but I want to represent the Virgin Islands in the 2016 Olympics, and I believe I can make it if I work hard enough. I will just be turning 17."
