Swimming Captain, Timothy Sates with Guest of Honour, Chad le Clos
The WBHS Invitational Gala was once again hosted at the Westville Aquatics Centre and unlike last year, the weather was perfect. With no competitive gala in KZN at this stage of the season, the local teams were keen to see who had improved and with National coach, Graham Hill now coaching some of India’s 2020 Olympic squad at Glenwood, the gala was to be exciting. Unfortunately Northwood and Clifton had Water polo teams away and Glenwood and Clifton had boys on National duty in Zimbabwe playing polo so it was up to the out-of-province teams to push defending champions Westville. Grey College were once again very strong in the U14’s and the Breastroke while St. Davids had a very balanced all round team and both pushed Westville in every race.
After race 10, despite the Westville boys having swum 14 personal best times, the scores were tied with Grey College who won 2 of the Freestyle relays and 4 of the Breastroke relays. Grey College broke the U14 Breastroke record while Westville broke the U15 Freestyle record. The rest of the gala saw Grey and Westville pushing each other and St David’s often taking points away from both teams.
Westville dug deep and won the next 5 Backstroke relays to open up a 6 point lead going into the Butterfly events. Westville won the U14 and U15 Fly events in record times while Grey College won the U16’s. Westville won both the U17 and U19 Fly events to take a 9 point lead into the Medleys. Grey showed that they had top Breastrokers and won the next three events with their U15’s breaking the record. Westville replied with wins in the U17 and U19 with the U19’s breaking the record as well.
Westville were pushed all the way by St Davids in the 5 age group Ladder Freestyle but held on for a narrow victory and to retain the trophy.
The final scores were :
- WBHS A 298
- Grey College 280
- Davids 256
- Benedicts 205
- Pretoria Boys 180
- Glenwood 178
- Maritzburg College 157
- WBHS B 149
- Kearsney 128
- KES 102
- DHS 58
- Parktown 37