Saturday morning, 9 February, saw most of the same schools (from the previous evening’s Invitational Gala at WBHS) doing battle at King’s Park to decide the 2013 Long Course champions.
Westville were determined to make it 6 wins in a row in this annual championship gala as well. The gala pits the top 5 Gauteng schools against the top 5 KZN schools.
Making their first appearance of the weekend were Kearsney, St Stithians and King Edward.
This gala again proved a most exciting affair, showing that a number of schools are taking their swimming programmes seriously and are out to challenge Westville.
Westville made up for their lapses in the butterfly on the previous evening by winning all 6 butterfly events .
They came close to winning all the back stroke events but were edged out by Pretoria Boys High in the u 14 event.
The Highways giants also won all races except for the under14 event in the Medleys.
They did not have things their own way in the breaststroke—although they won the under 15 ,17 and 19 races Glenwood shared the spoils by winning the other three races.
Westville also faced strong challenges in the Freestyle events with St Stithians surprising everyone by edging out Westville in very exciting races in the under 15 freestyle and the 5 age free style ladder relay. Glenwood edged Westville in the under 14 event .
The level of competitive swimming seen at the gala augers well for the future of boys high school swimming in the country.
At the end of the day Westville again emerged supreme winning 21 of the 30 events, but this year they had to fight hard for every win. Their under 19s continued their awesome destruction of existing records— winning all their races in record time.
Final results :
- WBHS – 291
- Pretoria Boys’ – 234
- Glenwood – 205
- Clifton – 193
- Kearsney – 182
- St Stithian’s – 153
- St David’s – 149
- KES – 105
- DHS – 89
- Parktown – 43