District Swimming Report 2022

Dear Parents,

As many of you may have heard, we got the sporting year off with a splash at the Eltham District Swimming Carnival on Friday last week. The children had been to trials in the 3rd week back at school at WaterMarc. All students in years 3-6 who were interested came along to take part in time trials. We then selected a team of around 20 students to represent us at the District Carnival. Unfortunately, we were hit by Covid and ended up only having 14 students able to attend on the day. Our Swimming Captains for this year were Jaime Havalica and Edie Jarrott. We had plenty of good results during the carnival with a number of our students representing the school for the first time and others competing at their first ever competitive swimming carnival.  At the end of the event we finished 7th Overall.  

Special congratulations to Jaime Hvalica who finished 1st in 12 Boys Freestyle and Breaststroke. He qualified for the Nillumbik Division Championships on Tuesday 1st March and has now progressed through to Regional Championships.  Special mention to Harry Collins, Anderson Lovelace, Sharni Tranquili and Niamh McCann for representing the school in swimming for the first time. Hopefully they inspire a few more students in their age group to give it ago next year. Thanks to the year sixes Eden Barber, Emily Gartland, Lottie Dalton, Eloise Bell and Edie Jarrott, who have represented OLHC in swimming for the last time, they have all been in the team every year they possibly could. I know a number of the students who missed out on competing this year are very disappointed. To those who are year sixes, thanks for your efforts over the last 3 years and to those younger ones, I look forward to you competing for the school again next year, you were missed!

Special mention to Harry Collins for his first place in his 10 Boys Freestyle race, as well as Joseph Natoli for his second place in the 11 boys Freestyle and Fletcher Schultz for his third place in the 11 boys Breaststroke. 

Miss Kenny and the Lucky two mums who came to help on the bus, were so impressed with the way our swimmers gave it their best and kept telling me how fantastically behaved and encouraging our students were at the pool. I was very proud of all the team members’ performances and especially pleased, with the sportsmanship they showed toward their opponents and the encouragement they offered their teammates. 

Special thanks to all those students who don’t swim a lot, who came along as members of the team. You displayed some great school spirit and stepped up to represent OLHC in swimming. It is easy to put your hand up when you know you are good at something, but it shows some extra character to try out when you know it is going to be tough. I also encourage all our younger swimmers to keep putting in the laps in the pool between now and next year. 

My last thanks go not only to all the children in the team but also to all the children who tried out but missed out. It is your efforts that made the team members try so hard.

Mark Pinkerton

Members of the 2022 Swimming Team