Foundation Magazine 2021-2022 | Mount Kelly

SWIMMING
• 42 finalists
• 8 Open Mount Kelly records
• 3 Junior Champions – Erin Little,
Hollie Widdows & Leah Whittaker
• 3 European Junior Consideration
Times – Erin Little x2, Calvin Fry
• 4 Athletes selected to GB European
Junior Team – Erin Little, Calvin Fry,
Hollie Widdows & Matthew Ward
• 2 Scottish Age Group records –
Matthew Ward x2
• 99 personal best times
Elsewhere around the Home Nations saw
a small but mighty team at both the Welsh
Championships in Swansea and the Irish
Open Championships in Dublin. The 5
swimmers in Swansea came away with
12 medals and 25 personal bests and the
6 swimmers in Ireland packed a similar
punch making 21 finals. Congratulations
go to Sophie Brassington (National
Champion x2), Katie Bamborough
(National Champion), Anthony Davies
(National Champion), Brianna Davies
(National Champion x2) and Sian Davies
who competed in Swansea and Brydan
Byrne, Shannon Byrne, Nemone Rogers,
Nevaeh Kenny, Grace Conroy and
Breanna Chamberlain who competed in
Dublin.
Across the Atlantic, Sam Williamson
represented his home nation of Bermuda
at the CARIFTA games being held in
Barbados. A great meet for Sam saw him
collect 5 medals, including the Gold in
the 200 Breaststroke and 400 Individual
Medley.
Our two Italian male Year 12 swimmers,
Riccardo Lucarelli and Luca Arioli,
competed at the Italian Winter short
course championships and between them
came away with 100% personal best
success rate in their races.
SUMMER TERM
The Summer Term proves to be a tricky
one for swimmers balancing the stress
and workload around exams alongside
coming to the sharp end of the swimming
season and preparing for Nationals. This
year’s cohort proved their resilience and
hard working nature during this tough
time and the results kept coming in
their droves. At the GB Deaf National
Championships in Loughborough, Year
9 pupil Alice Kinsey became national
champion in the 100 Backstroke and won
Silver in 50 Backstroke, 50 Freestyle and
50 Fly and Bronze in the 100 Freestyle.
As the Commonwealth Games was
lingering on the horizon, a test event at
the new pool for the Games was held and
a number of Mount Kelly swimmers were
lucky enough to be involved and had
the opportunity to race in front of 3000
spectators at the wonderful new venue.
Before the year was out, our younger
swimmers went to their biggest team
competition of the season, the IAPS
National finals being held at the London
Aquatic Centre. The team swam incredibly
well with lots of PBs and came away with
1 Gold, 4 Silver, and 3 Bronze, as well as
12 finalists, and our 12 & Under girls were
runners up in their age group as well as
the girls team taking second place overall.
SWIMMING
The South West Regional Championships
took place over a 3 weekend period and
involved swimmers from the Prep all
the way up to our elite squad and the
strength of the programme from top to
bottom was really put on show. Across
the youth and age group championships,
the programme collected 56 Golds, 43
Silvers and 45 Bronze medals.
Year 13 student Leo McCrea finished off
his prolific time at Mount Kelly in style with
a World Championships Silver Medal in
the SB5 100 Breaststroke in Madeira.
The introduction of a house swimming
competition was a fabulous opportunity
to bring together the whole school into
the swimming domain and develop a
real sense of House spirit. A fantastic
competition took place with opportunities
for non-swimming pupils to have a go at
racing and in the end Courtenay House
came out on top.
As is now customary, as the term starts
to draw to a close we like to recognise
those swimmers who display desirable
characteristics and attributes and these
are voted by their fellow swimmers. It’s
a fantastic opportunity to appreciate
the great people behind the swimming
results. A total of 12 categories were
voted on, with winners in each category
coming from Junior (Prep), Intermediate
(Years 9 & 10) and Senior (Years 11,12 &
13) representatives.
As the weather warms up back at home,
our distance swimmers start to venture
outside of the pool and race in open water
competitions. At the regional event, our
11 swimmers in attendance took home 9
medals and qualification for the National
event in August.
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