The National Aquatics Festival is one of the most prestigious events on the aquatics calendar. The event was started in 2000 by Pretoria High School for Girls. The event includes a swimming gala (swum over 50m), a 1st team water polo tournament and a diving competition. Teams from around the country participate in the two-day event. St Mary’s had the privilege of hosting the event this year.

The Aquatics Festival was opened by Lize-Mari van Staden (née Retief) on Friday 3 February. Lize-Mari is a St Mary’s Old Girl who, during her swimming career, held eight South African records as well as attended both the Olympics and Commonwealth Games.

The swimming gala was tightly contested with the lead changing hands many times. There were some very good swims from the St Mary’s girls throughout the morning, however, in the end, we finished in second place, just three points behind last year’s runners up, Our Lady of Fatima.

With inter-high just two weeks away, we hope that all the swimmers will continue to train hard in order to peak at this event.

The water polo section of National Aquatics was also a tightly-contested tournament with many games being won by one or two goals. We welcomed eight schools from Gauteng, K-ZN and the Eastern Cape. We saw some amazing game play by St Mary’s 1st team, who held some of the top teams to a very close score. At the end of the tournament, St Mary’s 1st team finished 4th overall.

Diving began with the U15 event then proceeded onto the U16 event and ended with the Open event.

It is a difficult competition for the divers as it is halfway through the season. This means that the schools are working on inter- high combinations and the divers are competing in more complicated and difficult dives for the first time.

The individual results of the St Mary’s divers are as follows: