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Sports Desk - 5 December
The final weekend of term saw some outstanding successes for Millfield Sport, with international medals in squash, a national title in tennis, regional titles in hockey, more best-times in the pool and a near clean sweep for rugby.
The senior squash players contested the Swiss Junior Open - one of the premier tournaments on the junior calendar - with Fiona Murphy narrowly losing the final to finish 2nd in the girls, Daniel Poleshchuk taking 3rd in the boys, and Roee Avraham 4th.
In Bolton, our U13 boys tennis team - combining boys from senior (Ralph Pattar) and prep schools (Finn Bass, Luke Hammond and Tristan Rudolph) - retained their National Schools title with a 10-8 tie-break win over Reeds School, after making the final without dropping a match. This made up a little for a very young and competitive U15 girls team (Olivia Dawkins, Eva Hurst, Jemima Potter and Marissa Stevenson) recently losing out on a place in their finals following a tie-break exit to Red Maids.
Our U16 and U18 hockey teams brought success for the girls, both winning their Regional Indoor titles at Cheltenham Ladies College and so qualifying for Nationals. Led by Megan Lewis-Williams, Fliss McCarthy and Ffion Thompson, the U16s dominated their matches scoring 21 goals to 4, beating Taunton 4-1 in the final. The U18s had a closer affair, beating Canford in the final with goals from Elli Galvin and Paige Roberts.
In the Regional Winter Swimming Championships, it was also the girls turn to shine, with Dani Lowe setting 3 Championship records and claiming 6 medals! She was joined in the record books by Josh Booth, James Guy, Joel Knight and Daniel Liu as the team claimed a total of 28 medals and a PB rate of 72%!
The rugby teams achieved a success rate of 82% in their block fixture against Monmouth School, winning 9 out of 11. Perhaps the most valued win after Monmouth's 10-match winning streak the U16As hard-fought 22-10 result, with excellent tries for Ollie Clarke and George Lavallin - the latter after some 30 phases! The 2nd XV continued what is becoming an excellent season with a 45-8 win, including a man-of-the-match performance from Lloyd Delahunty.
Elsewhere, our junior cross country teams finished 18th and 19th in the boys and girls English Schools Cup, led by Charlie Martin (25th) and Hanna Lidbetter (22nd). Our trampolinists enjoyed success at their SW Regional Championships, with the U15 boys team of Henry Carling-Parkinson, Yuu Kurihara and Asher Roberts claiming 2nd, Harriet Dixon 2nd in the U19 girls novice and Sebastian Baxter-Allen 3rd in the same - all qualifying for the Southern Zonal finals. Xavier Vrigneau finished a very creditable 14th in his first outing as a junior, in British Modern Pentathlon's first National Selection race of the season. And 8 girls completed their Grade 5 and Grade 7 ballet exams in Bridgwater.
There were honours too for our coaches, with Director of Swimming Jolyon Finck being included as part of the British Swimming's Development Coaches' Advisory Panel, Director of Fencing Tristan Parris being made lead National Academy Coach for the south west, and Head Coach of Squash Ian Thomas being invited to deliver clinics at Ivy League school Princeton.
Results from these and all other fixtures can be found on the Millfield website.