It’s been a great year for the school swimming team with earlier success winning the local swimming league, finishing in the top three at the South West English Schools’ Swimming Association (ESSA) Primary Team Championships, and qualification for the national championships. Here’s the end of year round up with two more amazing results.
ESSA Primary Team Championships – National Finals
Our penultimate event was the ESSA Primary Team Championships where Bishop Road competed against the finest school swimming teams across eight different regions from both the state and private sectors. This prestigious national event was held at the Ponds Forge International Sports Centre in Sheffield and was an exciting opportunity for the children.
In anticipation of the challenge ahead of themselves, the team attended additional practice sessions to sharpen up their relay swimming. It paid off! Both the boys and girls smashed the times they recorded at the South West heats – the biggest improvement being the boys’ medley team who improved their time by a whopping 10 seconds! The results and live stream of the event are available on the following link:-
Prim23 – SPORTSYSTEMS Meet Results Service (essa-schoolswimming.com)
There were 24 national finalists in our category and our placing were as follows: –
— Boys’ 4x25m Medley Team: Barnaby, Monty, Selim and Zach – 18th in a time of 1:17.41
— Girls’ 4x25m Freestyle Team: Emilia, Grace, Millie and Mia – 21st in a time of 1:05.96
— Boys’ 4x25m Freestyle Team: Barnaby, Zach, Monty and Selim – 19th in a time of 1:07.29
— Girls’ 4x25m Medley Team: Millie, Grace, Mia and Liz – 21st in a time of 1:16.45
A great achievement for the children and our school to compete at this level. Bravo! But we weren’t done yet…….
Bristol Schools’ Swimming Association (BSSA) – Primary Championships
The culmination of the swimming season and final gala for the Year 6 swimmers were the BSSA Primary Championships. With our recent successes, the team was in a confident mood but also aware we would be swimming against some strong teams in this citywide competition. It was a thoroughly exciting evening of swimming and turned out to be the most successful evening of swimming for Bishop Road for many years.
Our team of nine performed superbly to win SIX of the seven trophies available and set two new BSSA records whilst doing so!
So many super results and personal best times. Grace swum the 25m breaststroke in 19.92s to beat the previous championship best of 19.97s (held by a Bishop Road swimmer since 2011). The most exciting race of the evening was the final of the boys’ freestyle relay with Barnaby catching the Clifton High swimmer on the last stroke. In the final race of the night our squad showed their strength to win the mixed 6x25m cannon relay in a new record time of 1:43.45, beating the previous best by over three seconds. Here are a summary of those achieving medal success.
— 1st for Grace in the Girls’ 25m Breaststroke in 19.92s
— 3rd for Barnaby in the Boys’ 25m Backstroke in 20.05s
— 1st for the girls (Fran, Grace, Mia and Liz) in the 4x25m Medley Relay in 1:21.59
— 2nd for the boys (Barnaby, Monty, Selim and Zach) in the 4x25m Medley Relay in 1:24.92
— 1st for Mia in the Girls’ 25m Freestyle in 15.69s
–3rd for Barnaby in the Boys’ 25m Freestyle in 15.69s
— 1st for the girls (Grace, Liz, Fran and Mia) in the 4x25m Freestyle Relay in 1:10.43
— 1st for the boys (Selim, Monty, Zachary and Barnaby) in the 4x25m Freestyle Relay in 1:12.21
— 1st in the 6x25m Mixed Cannon Relay (Grace, Monty, Selim, Liz, Barnaby and Mia) in 1:43.45
With lots of races to compete, we rotated participation between the relay heats and finals – all part of the great team effort! So, well done to Emilia who took part in the medley relay and cannon heats and Fran and Zachary who helped get us to the finals in the cannon relay.
The full set of results can be viewed as follows: –
Primary Championships | bssa (bssaswimming.wixsite.com)
We’ll be back for more Bishop Road Swim Team galas next school year.🏊🏊🏾♀️🙂