On Friday evening, 28 February, seven Union High School swimmers participated in the Top 8 Invitational Gala at the Newton Park Swimming Pool in Port Elizabeth.
The Top 8 Gala is the culmination of the season’s ‘B’ Age Group Galas where the region’s top 8 swimmers in each age group and each stroke are selected to participate.
The atmosphere at the pool was, as always, very festive, with great camaraderie, friendly rivalry and good sportsmanship prevailing among the different schools.
As is tradition, the evening started with a poolside parade of all the teams, during which the Union swimmers proudly displayed their school flag as they made their way around the pool.
Throughout the evening that followed, Union’s swimmers gave it their all and managed to obtain six medals overall.
Congratulations to:
• Hannah Bodenstein who claimed gold in the 50m Backstroke and Hugo Botha who came first in the 50m Breaststroke,
• Elia Railton and Amber Binney who won silver in the 50m Backstroke and 100m Freestyle respectively, and;
• James Potgieter who took home bronze in both the 50m Backstroke and 50m Breaststroke.
Union High School is exceptionally proud of all of you!
The gala was hugely successful for Union, not only in terms of medals, but in times as well as six new personal bests (this included new PBs for first-timers, Mia and Hugo Botha) were also recorded!
This meet is always a wonderful competition with which to end off a very busy swimming season and we thank everyone involved for making it such a memorable event.
All our learners can be very proud of what they achieved and we look forward to seeing what next season holds in store for our Union swimmers!
• Union High School would like to extend a special word of thanks to Stefan and Andrea Ittershagen-Strauss who, very generously, hosted the swimmers for the night in Port Elizabeth.
They treated the learners to a great dinner and breakfast, and made sure that their evening was fun and relaxed.