WBHS retains invitational gala trophy

WESTVILLE Boys’ High School held its Invitational Gala at the Westville Aquatics Centre on Friday 12 February and retained the trophy once again.

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, WBHS. Grey College were once again strong in the U14s and the breastroke while St David’s had a balanced all-round team and both pushed WBHS in every race.

After race 10, despite the WBHS boys having swum 14 personal best times, the scores were tied with Grey who won two of the freestyle relays and four of the breastroke relays. Grey College broke the U14 breastroke record while WBHS broke the U15 freestyle record. The rest of the gala saw Grey and WBHS pushing each other and St David’s often taking points away from both teams.

WBHS dug deep and won the next five backstroke relays to open up a six-point lead going into the butterfly events. WBHS won the U14 and U15 fly events in record times while grey won the U16s. WBHS won both the U17 and U19 fly events to take a nine-point lead into the medleys. Grey showed that they had top breastrokers and won the next three events with their U15s breaking the record. WBHS replied with wins in the U17 and U19 with the U19s breaking the record as well.

WBHS were pushed all the way by St David’s in the five age ladder freestyle but held on for a narrow victory and to retain the trophy.

The final scores were WBHS A team (298), Grey College (280), St. David’s (256), St. Benedicts (205), Pretoria Boys (180), Glenwood (178), Maritzburg College (157), WBHS B team (149), Kearsney (128), KES (102), DHS (58), and Parktown (37).