Swimming into the National Finals

Bishop Luffa School senior girls medley and freestyle and junior boys medley teams have qualified for the English Schools National Swimming Gala Finals at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games Aquatics Center fighting off fierce competition.

For the second time in their Bishop Luffa tenure Hannah Day (12Ridgeway), Eloise Joubert (11Burrows), Florence Day (12Ridgeway) and Libby Johnson (11Sherborne) have qualified for the National Schools Swimming Finals. However, this time they will be in both the freestyle and medley finals and for the first time seeking to qualify out of the heats into the final to challenge for a medal.

In the Sussex qualifier the girls were on the podium in second and third place respectively only to be beaten by swimming giants Brighton College and Collyers. With all the nations results combined the team finished eleventh.

For the first time we have qualified two teams across three events. Max Stanton (8King), Alex Wilkes (8Burrows), Derin Cowley (8Story) and Curtis Jacobs (7Sherborne) qualified in the medley competition. In the Sussex qualifier the boys were locked in the first three positions until Curtis and Alex took over and the team finished five seconds ahead of Brighton College in second place!

With all the results combined the team were ranked sixteenth in the country.

A big thank you to Chichester Chiropractic Health who have agreed to sponsor the eight swimmers to purchase warm up tops which will be dated to keep as a memento of this incredibly special day and to fund an opportunity for the team to train together for the first time ahead of the finals.

All of our swimming teams have never trained or raced together and in comparison to the vast majority of schools that we compete against in the county qualification process and in the national final, these schools all train together at school regularly each week.

This is an outstanding achievement for the students involved and for the school. The final is on Saturday 16th November at the Sandwell Aquatics Center, Birmingham. Updates of the teams progress will be shared in due course.

Mr T Godfray, Team Leader of PE