ESSA Championships

Our U11 Swim Team put up a great show at Ponds Forge on Saturday at the ESSA National Finals. They have been training hard since qualifying, with additional sessions at school and in the longer pool at Jubilee. Our squad was made up of Annabelle (Captain), Charlie, William, Alicia and Charlotte. With two team combinations, we competed in the 4x25 Medley event and 4x25m Freestyle event. 

St Hugh’s falls within the ‘small school’ category having less than a combined total of 60 in Year 5/6. Given our size, it was super to see us swimming faster than many medium and open school teams across the country! 

Each event was made up of 3 heats of 8 with the top 24 schools battling for a place in the ‘A’ or ‘B’ final. The Medley team smashed their PB in the heat in a time of 1:13:04. This placed us 11th nationally. Unfortunately, we were given a DQ for leaving the blocks too early. A tough lesson to learn but Annabelle did an amazing job keeping the spirits up and we went into our freestyle relay determined to achieve another PB and qualify for the final. We did just that, swimming in a time of 1.06.73 (just short of five seconds off our qualifying time!). 

We approached the ‘B’ final with confidence, swimming in lane 4 as the fastest qualifier. Our goals were to beat our heat time and achieve a faster time than the 8th finisher in the ‘A’ final. It was an incredible team performance with St Hugh’s winning the race, swimming a whole second faster than our heat time (1.05.73). It was great to see how the team raised their game and we were delighted to finish with the 8th fastest time nationally.

Many thanks to the parents for supporting us so enthusiastically! Well done to all swimmers who will be awarded with their swimming badge for competing at a national event.