The Cannon - December 2012 - Fort Pitt Grammar School

THE CANNONPage 5SO YEAR 7 STUDENTS……HOW ARE YOUGETTING ON WITH THESE CHALLENGES?!I have been pleased to see Year 7 students attendinglunch time and after school clubs, and EnrichmentSessions this term. The recent Card Making Enrichmentclass was very popular with a number of you. Theseactivities all contribute to completing Challenge 1successfully. Which new skill have you chosen toexplore and develop?I have received some beautifully written book reviews forChallenge 2, and many postcards for Challenge 4 fromfavourite local tourist attractions such as RochesterCastle and Dickens World. Some students have beenfortunate enough to go further afield to completeChallenge 4. There have been postcards and photossent from London, Devon and even Pompeii!!It was lovely to hear that many Year 7 students used thesecond week of our October break to complete the‘Good Citizen’ Task. Many helped out at their oldPrimary Schools or spent much valued time helpingelderly neighbours and relatives.Year 7 – don’t forget to report your Challenge 15progress to your Form Tutor. Congratulations must go toChloe Harper who was first to complete all 5 challengesand produce an impressive folder of evidence of this.Well Done Chloe!Year 7 – spend some time this school holiday planninghow you will complete your next Challenge!Miss LangfordSPORTING NEWSBADMINTONOn Tuesday 13th November Fort Pitt school entered 2teams to play badminton in the secondary school gamesat Castlemaine Centre. I was part of team 1, along withLauren (year 8), Melissa (year 8) and Catherine (year 9).We were all feeling excited and nervous at the sametime. We had time to warm up and put into practice someof the skills we had been learning at after school club onMonday. We had a fantastic morning, supporting andcheering each other on. I am proud to say that we came2nd in competition overall and were presented with atrophy and medals.NATIONAL TRIATHLONOn the 17 th and 18 th of November, me and my sister:Darcey Barham (Year 9) and Jacinta Barham (Year 10)both competed in The British Triathlon Championships inSolihull, Birmingham.I competed on the 17 th , in the National Triathlon, which is 3out of the 5 Modern Pentathlon sports; so it was Swimming,Shooting and Running. I started off with the shoot first,which didn’t go as well as hoped-due to shaking quite a bitwith nerves! My shoot was 10 th out of all the competitors.After the shoot was the swim and it was 100m front crawl (4lengths of a 25m pool) in 1: 12: 51; which was a second offmy PB, but was still an okay time. She was 17 th out ofeveryone in the swim. After the shoot and swim, I was in13 th place. Finally it was the run, which was 1500m on arunning track. It was the fastest heat, and everyone wentout quite fast. I finished the 1500m in a time of 5:12:00dead, which was a PB by 4 seconds-and concluded to bethe 4 th best run! When the results were put up, I couldhardly believe that from my run, I had moved up 9 places,from 13 th to 4 th overall! It was out of 33 competitors, and Iwas also one of the younger ones in the Youth C age group,as next year I will still be in Youth C. Another bonus wasthat my team came second overall, which everyone waspleased with.On the 18 th , Jacinta had her competition. Jacinta alsostarted with the shoot, but didn’t do as well as she hadhoped and was in 19 th place after her shoot. Next was herswim, which was 200m (8 lengths of a 25m pool) frontcrawl; and Jacinta had the 5 th best swim out of all thecompetitors in her age group. Also finally Jacinta had therun, which was also 1500m. Jacinta finished the run in atime of 5:13:00, which gave her the 5 th best run. Overall inJacinta’s age group, she came 13 th - which was a fantasticachievement; as also Jacinta is one of the younger ones inher Youth B age group. Jacinta’s team also came 1 st . It alsoturned out that she had been goodenough to be selected for the WorldClass Talent ID Residential Camps; inrecognition of her performance in theNational Triathlon! For this she will goto two camps taking place at theModern Pentathlon Academy HartpuryCollege, Hartpury. At each camp, shewill have two full days of assessmentsconducted by the National CoachingTeam and the Sports Science Team.The aim of the camps is to identifypossible athletes to join direct ordevelop through to World ClassPathway Programme at Talent or ifindeed appropriate at Developmentlevel.Georgia Trythall Year 8Both of us are pleased with our results,and hope to compete in the NationalTriathlon next year, and also manyother competitions before then.Darcey Barham Year 8