KSW Swimmers Shine at English Schools’ Relays Gala

The first school swimming gala of the year took place on Tuesday (24th) afternoon at Malvern College.

This gala was the English Schools Swimming Association’s annual ‘Relays’ gala, where teams from any secondary school in the country are able to take part. Schools are invited to take a ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ team along in three different age groups; Junior (Lower 4 and Upper 4), Inter (Lower Remove and Upper Remove), and Senior (Fifth and Sixth Form). Whilst most schools only took one team in each age group, due to the renewed interest in swimming from pupils at the school, along with the number of club swimmers, Mr Jenkinson (Head of Swimming) and Mrs Monkhouse (Aquatics Teacher) were able to take 50 KSW pupils on the coach to the gala, to field an impressive 12 relay teams (two teams in each age group), at this competition!

Although preparation for this gala wasn’t ideal, with the swimming pool only opening the day before the gala, there was no sign that this had hindered the pupils, as they all demonstrated impressive swimming skills, great sportsmanship and excellent teamwork, throughout the gala.
The swimmers all swam 50m (two lengths of a standard 25m pool) in a Freestyle (Front Crawl) and/or Medley (Backstroke, Breaststroke, Butterfly and Freestyle) relay, against teams in their age category from local schools including; Pershore High School, RGS Worcester, King Edward VI and Haybridge School. Whilst all of the teams swam really well, with plenty of successes, the results will now be entered into a database, along with all of the other results from E.S.S.A. galas that are taking place around the country over the next few weeks, in order to create one overall, ‘virtual’ result for each relay category. Therefore, we now need to wait patiently to see if any of our relay teams have qualified for the E.S.S.A. National finals, which are taking place in the Commonwealth Games pool at Sandwell Aquatics Centre on Saturday 16th November.

Well done, and thank you very much to Mrs. Monkhouse and all of the pupils who gave up their afternoon and evening to take part, and represented KSW so well. And thank you also to all of the parents who came along to watch the pupils and cheer them on. The King’s Worcester Swimming Academy coaching team are already looking forward to helping the pupils in preparation for the next event.