NEXT week, 41 young Scottish athletes will set off for the sunny shores of the Bahamas. While it sounds like the holiday of a lifetime, there is slightly more at stake than that. The squad are set to compete in the Commonwealth Youth Games, with Team Scotland competing in seven of the nine sports on the programme — athletics, beach volleyball, boxing, cycling, judo, swimming and tennis.

It will be quite an experience for every one of the teenagers but none more so than the youngest member of the Scottish squad, Roisin Ramsay. The freestyler from Edinburgh is one of eight Scottish swimmers who will be boarding the plane next week and the teenager admits she can’t wait. “I’m really excited — it’s going to be a great experience,” she says. “This is a really big deal for me — it’s unlike any competition I’ve been to before but that’s one of the things I’m really looking forward to.”

At just 15 years old, Ramsay is the baby of the team but the swimmer is in no way out of her depth. She has proved her credentials by breaking the Scottish age-group 400m freestyle short-course record at the tail end of 2016 before winning gold in the 200m and 400m freestyle at the Scottish National Age Group Championships earlier this year. The Commonwealth Youth Games have been breeding ground for a number of Scottish athletes who have gone on to become stars on the international stage, including Ramsay’s fellow swimmer, Hannah Miley, as well as boxers Josh Taylor and Charlie Flynn and 800m runner Lynsey Sharp — and so Ramsay is looking forward to testing herself on a global stage. “My main target is just to swim well and this will be a good gauge for me to see where I am in world terms,” she says. “I’ve been training really hard so hopefully I should be able to put in a good performance and I’d like to swim some personal bests. Obviously I’ll try to make finals and even medal — that would be amazing — but that’ll be very tough; there’s some really fast girls out there.”

The idea of the Commonwealth Youth Games is to give young athletes experience so that when they move into the senior arena, they are ready to perform to their best. Ramsay already has a degree of experience of multi-sport events having competed in the UK School Games but she has been thrown into some unknown waters since her selection for the Bahamas, including dealing with the media. “It has been really strange getting attention,” she laughs. “I’ve never even done an interview before — this is my first one! It’s been exciting to be a part of this though. When I was younger, I never considered that I’d get to this level so now that I’m getting better and seeing this other side of the sport, I’m really loving it.”

Ramsay’s love for the water developed when she was a baby but it was when she joined Warrender Swimming Club at the age of 9 that her talent really began to show. She has remained at the club ever since, with one of the primary benefits of the Edinburgh club being that she has been afforded the opportunity to train alongside world-class swimmers such as two-time open-water world champion Keri-Anne Payne and Paralympic medallist Scott Quin. Seeing these global medallists up close has given Ramsay the belief that, with a shed-load of hard work, there is the possibility that she could potentially emulate them. “All the top swimmers are incredible and they all have a brilliant work ethic,” Ramsay says. “Keri-Anne Payne is a great role model and Scott Quin is so friendly so it’s great to see people at that level up close. Seeing how they train makes reaching their level more realistic — you always think of Olympians as these superhuman people but you see them up close and realise they’re just normal people who work really, really hard.”

Ramsay’s commitment to her sport cannot be questioned. Her alarm goes off at 4:50am each day allowing her to do a pool session before she heads to school. An evening session then follows which allows little time for Ramsay to indulge in some of the pursuits that many of her peers are enjoying. There is — the teenager says — no dilemma though. “Sometimes it’s hard to juggle my social life because I’m always training but I’m happy to sacrifice a few lunches with my friends if I have to,” she says. “I don’t ever want to skip training because swimming won’t wait but my friends will always be there. You have to say no to quite a lot of things and sometimes I feel like I miss out but that’s just what you have to do.”

Being such a tender age, Ramsay still has plenty of time for development and she admits that she tends not to set herself too many concrete targets. The Commonwealth Games is on her radar, while she admits that the Olympics remain the long-term dream. “I don’t look too far into the future because I’m just trying to focus on what I can do to improve,” she says. “My ultimate goal is to get to the Olympics but I know it’s a really long road to get there. I feel like if I put absolutely everything into it, that’s definitely a possibility but I know how tough it will be. And the 2022 Commonwealth Games is a big target for me — the Youth Commonwealth Games will give me a taste of that so competing in the senior version one day would be unbelievable.”