From the DMV to St. Lucia: A WeAquatics Family’s Swim Meet Journey
Shayla Moore did not set out to become a USA Swimming official. She also did not plan to travel to St. Lucia to officiate an international swim meet or to build connections with swim families from the Bahamas, Trinidad, and Jamaica. None of that was on her radar when she first started looking for swim lessons for her sons, Jakai and Dayton.
But that is exactly what happens sometimes. Your kids lead you somewhere you never expected to go.
It Started with a Two-Year-Old on an Adult Water Slide
Jakai, now 16, has always been drawn to water. The name, Kai, actually means ocean in Hawaiian, and from the very beginning, it suited him.
At two years old, he came zooming down an adult water slide at Massanutten while his mother watched from the sidelines, unable to enter the water park because she was pregnant with Dayton. No fear, no hesitation—just pure joy.
That fearlessness made getting Jakai into formal swim lessons early an obvious call. And once Dayton came along, it made sense to bring him into the water, too, even though his personality runs a little more reserved.
Having two kids in two different activities at two different places gets old fast, so swimming became the thing they did together.
What started as practical quickly became something much bigger.
Finding WeAquatics—and the Worrell Family
Jakai’s swimming progressed well beyond recreational lessons. He started making competitive cuts, and eventually the family found their way to WeAquatics and the Narwhals Swim Team. Both boys are now on the team, and the connection they built with the Worrell family—David, who founded WeAquatics in the DMV, and his mother Diane, who built the Rodney Heights Aquatic Centre in St. Lucia over 25 years ago—opened a door Shayla never anticipated.
“Your children bring you places that you couldn’t imagine. We as parents want to take them on a journey of experiences, but sometimes the children are leading our experiences.”
That turned out to be true in more ways than one. Because while Jakai was developing into a competitive swimmer, Shayla was becoming a swim official.
Becoming an Official (Because Someone Had to)
It started with a practical problem: Competitive swim teams in the DMV are required to have a certain number of certified officials relative to how many swimmers they have.
Without enough officials, a team can be fined.
When Shayla was on a previous team, parents were not exactly lining up to volunteer, so she stepped in.
“I became an official just to help out because it’s hard to get parents involved sometimes,” she said. “So I became an official for them because I was already one, and I was able to check that box off for them so they didn’t have to worry about those fines.”
When her sons joined the Narwhals, she brought that same commitment with her. WeAquatics was a growing team, and having an experienced official in the parent community made a real difference. Since then, Shayla has mentored two other parents through the certification process and has taken on the role of official chair for the team.
And here is where it gets interesting: when she connected with Diane Worrell—who herself became the first FINA-certified referee in St. Lucia after years of building and running the Rodney Heights Aquatic Center—something clicked. Two women who had followed their children into the swimming world ended up becoming officials.
Diane invited Shayla to come officiate at the RHAC Invitational in St. Lucia, the big annual meet in April that draws swimmers from across the Caribbean.
Shayla said yes.
What the RHAC Invitational Swim Meet Was Like
The Rodney Heights Aquatic Center Invitational—RHAC for short—happens every April and brings in swim teams from countries all over the Caribbean. Shayla and her sons were among the few WeAquatics families to make the trip this past year, and the experience was unlike any swim meet they’d attended in the States.
“It was very celebratory,” Shayla said. “It was full of energy from the start to the end. Still competitive, but the celebratory spirit—that piece was something we weren’t used to.”
A few things stood out immediately:
- The Parade of Teams, where every team marches in carrying their country or team banner. When WeAquatics was announced—just the two of them—the crowd cheered just as loud as they did for the teams with 100 swimmers.
- The pace of the day, which ran from morning through evening with a lunch break built in. That is not how swim meets work in the US, and Shayla’s group had no idea to expect it. “We were like, lunch?” she laughed.
- The atmosphere after the final event, where the celebration kept going well past the last race, with music and cheering that continued late into the night.
Even with all of that looseness in the atmosphere, the officiating was serious. The meet follows World Aquatics guidelines, and Dayton was disqualified in one of his events.
“Though they’re celebratory and welcoming, they’re still very serious about the sport,” Shayla said.
What struck her most, though, was how welcomed they felt, not just at the meet, but everywhere they went. When they told people they were in St. Lucia for a swim meet, the response was warm and genuine. “We kind of laid back and let others lead us instead of trying to say, ‘This is how we do it,’” she said. “And maybe that’s why people were so warm and welcoming to us.”
The Connections That Came Out of One Trip
That one trip has already opened up more. Shayla has since been invited to swim meets in Trinidad and the Bahamas. A swim official she met from the Bahamas wants to bring her daughters to DC to connect with the WeAquatics team. What started as a local swim team experience has quietly grown into something international.
And Shayla is now one of the people pushing to make sure more WeAquatics families make the trip to St. Lucia next April.
“The hope is that some of the other swimmers on WeAquatics will now go next year to the event,” she said. “It’s in April every year, and hopefully we can get some more families to come.”
It makes sense when you understand the relationship. WeAquatics and the Rodney Heights Aquatic Center are connected through the Worrell family—David runs the DMV program, and his brother Brad recently returned to St. Lucia to build and develop programming at the family’s facility there. In Shayla’s words, the trip felt like “a boomerang going back”—the reach started in St. Lucia, came to the US, and she was just making the return trip.
“They want to bring their sister swim school to the mother swim school,” she said.
What Any Parent Thinking About This Swim Meet Trip Should Know
For WeAquatics families who hear about the St. Lucia meet and wonder what it would actually be like, Shayla has straightforward advice: go in open. Do not expect things to run the way they do here. That is not a criticism of either place; it is just an adjustment, and it is worth it.
“I didn’t come in with the attitude of this is how we do it here,” she said. “I think that is an attitude that sometimes people from the United States carry, feeling like things should be a certain way. And although they did things differently, it was not anything that was against the rules or out of line. Coming in open to the experience, and letting them guide you into it instead of trying to control it yourself.”
As For Jakai, He Is Just Getting Started
Jakai, now 16, currently holds four sectional cuts in USA Swimming. He is close—less than a second away on at least one event—to qualifying for higher-level meets. The pyramid in competitive swimming goes from local LSC championships up through sectionals, futures, junior nationals, and Olympic trials, and he is already climbing it.
Watching him in the water still stops Shayla cold, and she is his mom.
“When I watch him, it’s like, wow,” she said. “It still amazes me to this day. He’s gliding with such speed, finesse, and agility. And I don’t know if it ever gets to the point where it’s like, I’ve seen it all before. I don’t think so.”
Neither do we.
If your family is ready to start your own swim journey, we would love to be part of it. Sign up for swim lessons or join the Narwhals swim team with WeAquatics and see where the water takes you.
