WBHS rules the waves at interprovincial invitational galas
WBHS still remains the power house of South African swimming after winning two inter-provincial invitational swimming galas.
WESTVILLE Boys’ High School commences with the inter-school swimming season with the annual Interprovincial Short Course Invitational Gala each year.
The gala attracts the top schools in the country, all of which are desperately keen to knock the hosts off their winner’s perch.
The chief protagonists are Grey College Bloemfontein, the Free State champions, and Pretoria Boys and St David’s, the top schools from Gauteng. Also in the mix, hoping for a crack at WBHS, were Glenwood and Clifton, Westville’s main rivals from KZN. Having won the gala for the last seven years the hosts were not about to relinquish their crown so easily. The WBHS team welcomed their new U14s who were an unknown factor up to the start of the gala, and Brad Rowe as a new coach.
The first two races , the U14 and U15 freestyle, unsettled the Westville team with both races going to Grey College, but then Westville soon got their momentum back and won the next three freestyle age groups. After another brief stutter in two of the five breaststroke events the Highways Giants swam away with the rest of the gala, winning all the backstroke and butterfly events and coming close to winning all the medley events. The heavy rain could not dampen the spirits of the Westville’s enthusiastic spectators; this drove the Westville team on and they got stronger and louder through the night.
Although Grey College took the prestigious last event, the ladder freestyle, WBHS won the gala by 49 points. This was an even more convincing victory than last year’s win. Westville has now won this gala for the eighth consecutive year. Special mention must be made of the Westville B team, which beat the A teams of Maritzburg College, King Edward, Northwood and DHS. This was an outstanding achievement.
WBHS was first with 333 points, Grey College had 284, St David’s had 267, Glenwood scored 242, Clifton 232, Pretoria 210, Kearsney 176, Hilton 68, WBHS B 129, Maritzburg College 105, KES 102, Northwood 84 and last, DHS with 53 points.
* WBHS also won the forty-ninth Alan Burt Gala for the eight consecutive year last Saturday. The annual Alan Burt gala pits five Gauteng schools against five KZN schools in the usual 26-event relay format. The new WBHS U14s settled into some power relays where they won every one of their events and broke two records by nearly three seconds respectively. The WBHS U17 team also cruised to victory in all their events, while the U19 team only lost one race, the breastroke relay, to Pretoria Boys. WBHS also won all of the ladder events but one, where Glenwood broke the ladder breastroke record.
By the final whistle it was evident that WBHS still remains the power house of South African swimming and, if anything, the team of 2015 is even stronger than that of 2014.
Results: WBHS 285 (95 per cent of the total points on offer), Glenwood and Pretoria Boys scored 225, St David’s 211, St Stithians 192, Kearsney 65, KES 103, Maritzburg College 102 , DHS 76 and Parktown 56 points.
