Resounding victory in House Swimming

After a win in the Catherine Tyler relays, the team began gearing up for the Inter-House Swimming. This is the main swimming event of the year for the House, and after last year’s defeat to New House, much of the team had been putting in some training beforehand.

            On the day we started well with a win in both the Junior and Senior Individual Medleys, which were won by Ben Nevill and Frank Flight respectively. Ben easily outswam the opposition ending with a half length’s lead and Frank, to put a further feather in his cap, although worn out from the 100m of the Individual Medley, gained us our second win two races later in the Senior 50m Breaststroke. In the Backstroke Charlie Howard and Liam Fletcher won the Intermediate and Senior events respectively. While Liam led his race from the start, Charlie held second place almost till the end, and then in the final few metres he powered home to a win, beating his opponent by less then a second.

We then attained four more wins in the individual races. Mark Smith took the Senior 25m Butterfly and Luke Duggan narrowly won the Senior 50m Freestyle, which was one of the fastest races of the gala. Ben Nevill and Mark Smith then swam again in the Junior and Senior 100m Freestyle respectively. Both led their races from the start, keeping a good distance ahead of the opposition, and Ben did especially well, ending his race a half-length ahead of second place.

At the end of the individual races, we were joint first with Latham at 84 points. The team was determined, however, not to let them walk away with the trophy, so we would have to go all out on the relays. With this in mind we started well with the Junior Medley team taking first place. The Intermediates came up against some tough opposition from Latham and School House, but managed a respectable Third in the medley. The Seniors took first place in their Medley. The Juniors then followed this in their final relay (Freestyle) with another first place, with some surprisingly fast swimming by certain team members. The Intermediates completed their last race, again achieving a respectable third.

The Seniors then completed the relays with Luke Duggan swimming the final length and bringing the Seniors and the entire team home to victory, as after winning four out of the six relays we were certain that we had one. The official announcement was that we had won with 141 points, beating Latham by five points. This meant that for the first time we had won both the Caroline Tyler Relays and the Inter-House Swimming, and for the tenth time in 11 years the Inter-House Relays.

As well as winning the overall aggregate we also won the Junior and Senior aggregates. It was a tremendous result so really well done boys! Finally I would like to make a special mention of Luke Duggan, Liam Fletcher and Mark Smith who are all in Upper Sixth, so swam in their last Gala for The Orchard after swimming for the House in all the previous House Galas since B Block.