Seniors get black line fever
By Aleah Borgas, Year 12, St Andrew’s Catholic College
ON February 15, 2018, St Andrew’s held their annual swimming carnival for senior years.
The day consisted of record-breaking races, fundraising races, participation races and various other fun activities such as a teachers v students race.
Although it was an extremely hot day, with tough competition, everyone got involved and filled each of the three heats for each stroke and had plenty of opportunities to get in the pool and cool off as non-competitive relays ran throughout the day.
The carnival was an opportunity for the new college house captains to step up and lead their team.
This was the first leadership role this year for the captains and most of the day was spent marshalling students, competing in races and leading the war cries of each college house. The day began with competitive freestyle and concluded with relays, where the fastest students from each house showed off their skills in the water.
Records tumbled, and the house rankings changed as elite students gave outstanding performances, with those placing in the top three of any event moving on to the inter-school carnival.
From the moment the first freestyle race started, Brad Greene, deputy principal – senior years was on the microphone giving a running commentary for the whole stadium to hear, often laced with backhanded compliments and questionably appropriate jabs at the swimming techniques and costumes of each student that was unlucky enough to catch his eye.
The almost relentless banter would have been too much if it was not broken up by the whistles, drumming and chanting from each of the college houses — Chisholm, Ozanam, Mackillop and Hollows, each representing their respective themes.
Towards the end of a perfectly scheduled day (an art refined by college head of sport Patrick King), each college house had their moment in the spotlight to show their spirit with their own chant.
All students lined the edges of the pool as St Andrew’s best rocketed through the water.
As if they didn’t have enough fun on the day, the teachers formed their own ‘fantastic four’, who demanded a massive handicap as they raced against the four best male and four best female swimmers in the college.
Even as one teacher attempted to pull down a 190cm tall male student by their ankle in the final lap, the teachers still managed to cap off an incredibly entertaining day for all with a big fat loss.