The Oundle swim team achieved personal bests, a new record and a place in the boys freestyle finals event at last weekend’s ESSA 64th Secondary Schools’ Team Championships at the London Aquatics Centre.
Oundle’s first event of the day was the Inter Girls 4x50m Freestyle Relay heat, swum by Nwando (W), Margaux (L), Ceris (L) and Omorinsola (W), who finished with an excellent overall time of 2:00.20. Their finish time represents the hard work and commitment the girls put into their training and placed them twenty-second out of the top thirty schools in the country that qualified for the championships.
The Inter Boys 4x50m Medley Relay heat was started by Ippon (F) on backstroke, followed by Alexander (Sc) on breaststroke, Euan (Sc) on fly, and finished with Tochukwu (Sc) on freestyle. The boys total time was a very quick 2:07.22, placing them twenty-fourth in the country.
The last event of the day was the Inter Boys 4x50m Freestyle Relay heat. The Inter Boys team was represented by Alexander (Sc), Tochukwu (Sc), Euan (Sc) and Alex(C), who finished with an astonishing time of 1:48.18. Not only did the boys achieve a personal best, but they also placed tenth overall in their age group and won a place in the finals.
This was the first time that the Oundle School Swimming team had qualified for a finals event at the Secondary Schools’ Team Championships.
In the championships finals, the boys swam a very close race, finishing tenth in the country with a time of 1:50.66.
The Secondary Schools Team Relay Championships is the longest running championship series organised by the ESSA. The Championships is a national final with competing schools determined by the fastest times achieved in a qualifying round. In 2022, the ESSA had two thousand and ninety-nine teams from over three hundred schools that participated in the qualifying round in twenty separate galas across the country.