Wow what a term it has been for the swimmers so far. The boys from years 5 and 6 have been busy qualifying through to the London and English Schools finals whilst also preparing for this weekend’s IAPS nationals for years 5-8.
Before half term the boys from years 4-8 were invited to Eastbourne College to take part in a swimming gala against St. Andrew’s Prep. It what was a fantastic day out as we were shown around Eastbourne College’s brand new building which includes a new 25m swimming with electronic timing, dining hall and Sports Hall. We were also lucky enough to be taken down to the beach and the boys were spoken to about the schools project to protect the beach and how the students were working with the art and science departments on researching the subject. We were also lucky as the sun shone down on us as we were at the beach, with some of the boys in year 4 impressing the Eastbourne staff by finding an old laptop that had been thrown into the sea. Later we came back to the pool to swim against St. Andrew’s Prep in which the boys swam to their usual high standards winning comfortably. Finally to see us off Eastbourne very kindly cooked a BBQ for some very hungry boys before we left to come home.
This week we also saw the boys back in the pool with the boys in year 3&4 swimming in a fixture against James Allen’s Preparatory School. It what was an exciting gala with some very close races the boys showed great spirit and won in both years 3, 4 and overall. The gala also saw two of the schools longest standing records broken with Sterling Smith beating the year 3 25m Freestyle record set in 1978 and then straight afterwards so he wasn’t left outdone Harri Kokkini also beat the year 4 25m record from 1979.
A huge congratulations to both boys for beating two records which have stood for the last 40 years and also to Mason Graves Brown who beat the year 7 50m butterfly record not once but twice in the last couple of months.
