Girls Grammar makes a splash!

Last Friday, a team of eight CGGS students attended the 97th Independent Girls Schools Association (IGSA) Swimming and Diving Championships in Sydney at the Olympic Park Aquatic Centre. This marks the first time the School has been represented at an IGSA competition for several decades.

Katelyn Wall (Y7), Cady Hiew-Leonard (Y7), Claire Bridley (Y8), Elizabeth Denney (Y8), Alyse O'Brien (Y8), Chloe Douglas-Byrne (Y10), Maggie Burdon (Y10), and Lucy Piva (Y11) represented CGGS with energy, enthusiasm and pride. CGGS placed a very respectable 14 out of 27 schools, especially considering other schools fielded teams for 50+ swimmers. To put this in perspective, if we were to look at the winning school’s results based on the same number of events that we were able to enter, there was only a 14-point margin between us. Factor in that our girls had to swim every race, rather than selecting a couple of their favourite events, our swimmers were definitely punching above their weight!

We congratulate the girls on the following results:

Relays

• Junior 4 x 50m Relay Medley Team – Third Place in their division
• 6 x 50m Relay which comprised of a student in each age group - Second in their division, making it through to the finals with an impressive sixth place overall out of 27 schools.

We had a number of stand-out performances by our students including Claire Bridley who came eighth overall in the U13 50m Freestyle B Final. Congratulations also to the following three swimmers on their exceptional individual results:

Chloe Douglas Byrne

• Intermediate 100m Freestyle – First in her division
• 15 years 50m Freestyle – First in her division
• 15 years 50m Butterfly – First in her division
• Chloe made overall Finals in all three of these races as well.

Lucy Piva

• Open 200m Individual Medley – First in her division
• 17 years 50m Freestyle – First in her division
• 17 years 50m Butterfly – First in her division
• 17 years 50m Breaststroke – First in her division
• Lucy also made overall Finals in all four of these races as well.

Katelyn Wall

• 12 years 50m Freestyle – First in her division
• 12 years 50m Backstroke – First in her division
• 12 years 50m Breaststroke – First in her division

Katelyn also made finals in all of these races and placed in two of the finals, which made her our most successful swimmer of the day.

• U12 50 Freestyle third overall (medal)
• U12 50m Breaststroke second overall (medal)

As we congratulate our first IGSA Swimming Team, we look forward to celebrating CGGS’s involvement in the next IGSA Carnival, which is Cross Country at Frenshsam on 13 May. We encourage all our runners to train hard and make the School fun run count, so they can race towards selection for our next IGSA representative team.

Ms Ellena Papas

Executive Director (Operations)