Swimming Update
Casper Sunley, Captain of Swimming, writes: A large Teddies team competed against Abingdon, Stowe and St. Helen and Katherine’s at Abingdon pool on Wednesday 7th October; we took three teams in all age categories. The gala opened with mixed medley relays in which all our teams performed brilliantly. The U18 boys excelled, achieving an awesome time of 2.01.70, gaining us first position and clearing the other teams by more than 2 seconds. We had some fantastic swims from Sascha Clark-Jones who achieved 1.25.67 in his individual IM; Ciaron Loh, who came second in the U18 boys IM with a time of 1.05.6 and first in the U18 fly with a solid 28.21; and Vladimir Farenkov who came first in the U18 breaststroke with a time of 34.12. Ciaron, Vladimir, Louis Wright and James Bazeley took second place in the freestyle with an impressive time of 1.54.52. Lara Paul competed in her first gala, swimming both the backstroke and freestyle relay. The U14 girls achieved second place over all with some very pleasing swims from Amber Walkinshaw and Maddie Catchpole; Lizzie Dorey swam 6 events: we couldn’t get her out the water!
A seriously good performance all round with impressive results across the board. Amber Walkinshaw and Elizabeth Dorey were our most valued swimmers of the gala – they both swam to their best ability and got in the water to race at every possible moment!
A previous report by Casper from September: This year, the swimming squad were invited to participate in the Inter-Schools’ Swimming Relay Championships at Stowe School for the first time. It was exciting for the Teddies U18 and U16 mixed teams to compete against schools reknown for their highly competitive swim squads including Bromsgrove, Bedford, and Oundle. As a team of seven senior boys and girls and four inter boys everyone swam their best, with our junior swimmers Sascha Clark-Jones and Gong Limsong competing above their age group. Individual times proved this and there were many pbs on the day. The inter boys performed particularly well, reaching both the freestyle and medley relay finals, with a particularly notable effort from Matt Thornton who swam a pb of 28.19 in the 4x50m freestyle relay final placing Teddies 4th overall, just outside the medal rankings. Frank Wates impressed with a time of 34.73 for 50m fly in the 4x50m medley relay. The senior girls did their best given the circumstances as they were a swimmer down. They take away pbs and valuable race experience for next time. Molly van der Heiden was our most valued swimmer, rising to the challenge with her positive attitude – well done!