10-year-old Filipina in UAE bags several awards from international swimming competitions - Jaella Mische Mendoza

Jaella Mische Mendoza

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10-year-old Filipina in UAE bags several awards from international swimming competitions 10-year-old Jaella Mische Mendoza is a Filipino UAEbased competitive swimmer with multiple swimming records. The young Filipina, who started joining swimming competitions since she was seven, has been excelling very well in swimming in the UAE after conquering local, national, and international swimming competitions.

Recently, Mendoza has broken the UAE swimming record for the 10-year-old age category. She is the current UAE swimming record holder for 50 meters and 100-meter butterfly, and 100-meter backstroke for the 10-yearold age group. She obtained this record at the recently concluded first Swimming Community Performance Championship competition held last April at the Hamdan Sports Complex, Dubai.

So far, Mendoza has won a total of 26 gold, 22 silver, and 10 bronze medals from international, national, local, and inter-school level competitions held in the host country in the span of three years. Last year, she defeated swimmers from different overseas clubs from Lebanon, Oman, Bahrain, and Uganda during the Middle East Open & Junior Championship 2020.

Mendoza, a student of GEMS Winchester Dubai, said her goal is to be known as an international swimmer and be able to represent the Philippines in the Olympic games in the future.

Her passion for joining swimming competitions was put on hold when the pandemic struck. Her parents were hesitant to send her back to swimming class and it took them six months before they decided to put her back to training and put her back on track. By the time she joined the competition in April, she aced it and got the record.