On Friday 17th January, 8 children from Years 4-6 competed against over 30 schools from across Kent down in Gillingham, in individual races in Front Crawl, Breaststroke, Backstroke and Butterfly, and in 2 relay races - a medley of different strokes and a freestyle race.

It was a very long, and at the end quite tiring day, with all the children having competed in 3 out of the 4 individual strokes and one relay race. Everyone gave 100% effort to every race and swam the fastest they could. Each individual race had almost 90 competitors, with our highest positions being 4th out of 87 in the Boys Freestyle (Alex), 6th out of 86 in the Boys Breaststroke (Joseph) and 9th out of 67 in the Boys Butterfly (Alex). In the relays, we competed against teams from every other school, coming in a brilliant 11th out of 32 schools in the medley relay and a superb 8th out of 32 in the freestyle relay.

Overall, Crockenhill came an excellent 11th place out of the 32 schools. This is an especially amazing achievement as we only had one practice session and were competing against schools with their own swimming pools and a few private schools. I am so proud of all the children who competed, especially as lots of the children swam faster times than they had done in practice. Their behaviour was impeccable and the sportsmanship and support between themselves and towards the other schools was lovely to see. There was a slight delay at the beginning due to a fire alarm and the children were so sensible and mature following the instructions when we were not sure what was happening.

Finally, a huge thank you to all the parents who travelled down to the swimming pool with the children and stayed and supported throughout the day. (I think we definitely had the loudest/most encouraging set of supporters there!)

Well done Crockenhill!