The St Mary’s aquatics team had an excellent weekend competing at the annual National Aquatics Festival. This year the event was hosted by St Mary’s DSG Kloof.

Friday 11 February proved to be a successful day for our aquatic sports. The swimming and diving teams both placed first in the gala and diving competition. The water polo team won two of their three pool games.

Our swimmers swam well with many of them achieving personal bests. They achieved a total of 445 points placing them in 1st place, 17 points ahead of Our Lady of Fatima DSG and 91 points ahead of the 3rd place winners, St Stithians College.

The diving team were able to follow suit and placed first with a total of 83 points, with many of the divers winning silver medals in their age group events. The diving competition proved to be competitive and it was exciting to watch our divers bring out their big dives.

The water polo team played their pool matches and beat Maris Stella 15-0 and St Mary’s Kloof 13-4. They lost 10-1 to St Stithians, despite many pressured opportunities to score. On Saturday, the team displayed true grit in their semi-final against Clarendon where they managed to fight hard to get themselves into a penalty shootout but, sadly, lost. They then played Durban Girls’ College for the bronze medal match and lost.

St Mary’s Waverley will host the National Aquatics Festival in 2023 and we look forward to a spectacular event in our very own aquatics centre.

KELSEY THOMSON
HEAD OF AQUATICS