• SANCHO TAN
Seventeen-year-old Negrense Carmina Sanchez Tan recently competed in the 2025 Junior Olympic Championships in Arlington, Texas, United States at the Arlington ISD Athletics Center and Natatorium starting on June 28.
The competition was organized by the USA Artistic Swimming and gathered close to over 900 athletes representing different Artistic Swimming Clubs across all states in the United States.
Carmina, a Talisay City resident and a member of the Philippine Artistic Swimming Team, currently trains and swims for the Meraquas of Irvine, an artistic swimming team based in Irvine, California headed by Coach Candy Hipp. She competed in three events, the 15-17 Women Solo Free, the 15-17 Women Duet Free, and the 15-17 Women Team Free.
Under the tutelage of coaches Candy, Haley and Nikki Szekely, she finished 6th overall among 32 finalists in the Solo Free event with a final score of 155.9038 and won the Silver Medal in the 15-17 Women Duet Free event with her Duet partner Karen Cho, besting 24 other teams with a score of 183.9200.
Additionally, Carmina also swam in the 15-17 Women Team Free together with Karen Cho, Tori Jang, and Isabelle Yang, where they won the Gold Medal and emerged as National Champions, successfully defending and retaining the title they won last year. Their total routine score of 192.2083 was 38 points ahead of the silver medalists, a team from Florida.
Leading up to the 2025 Junior Olympic Championship, Carmina and her team had to go through a series of qualifying competitions where only the top 2 swimmers advance and can qualify for the National Championships. Among her qualifying competitions were the Junior Olympic Associations and the Junior Olympic Regionals where she competed with swimmers from within Southern California. She won Gold and Silver Medals in her 3 events, Solo Free, Duet Free and Team Free.
She likewise swam for the Meraquas of Irvine in the Junior and National Artistic Swimming Championships in Greensboro, North Carolina and the West Zone Championship in San Diego, California last April and May 2025, respectively.
Carmina trains at least 15 hours weekly with the Meraquas of Irvine and has been a member of the team since July 2023. Prior to joining Meraquas of Irvine, she was training in Bacolod City, virtually, under coach Leilani Torres, an Artistic Swimming Olympian from Puerto Rico based in Chile for three years and was supervised by her mother, Giselle Sanchez Tan.
She was first introduced to the sport by coach Reina Suarez in 2018 and was named as a Junior National Training Pool swimmer in 2019. She has since competed and represented the Philippines in Artistic Swimming meets like the Asian Age-Group Swimming Championships in India, the Singapore Open in Singapore and the 2024 SEA Age Group Aquatic Championships in Thailand.*
