Our first ever Divisional Rowing competition took place on the afternoon of May 20^th in Chapel, with children in Forms 7 & 8 and staff competing in front of the whole Upper School. The Chapel proved an exciting arena for this sport, with the large screen displaying the progress of the race and cheering that threatened to blow the roof off at times!

All pupils in Form 7 & 8 had been invited to take part in a league in the run-up to the finals, and 44 children had taken up the challenge, accruing points towards their divisional total; the top 4 in each category were then put forward to the live individual finals.

Individual races were 2 min long, with children competing to see who could go the furthest in that time. Jamie and Cecilia put in some excellent results in the F7 races to win, which bodes well for next November’s Schools’ Championships. The atmosphere of competition brought out Personal Best distances from Arthur, Leonardo, James, Cecilia and Athena. The F8 individual races were won by Emilia and Archie, with Personal Best distances achieved by Emilia, Nadia, Aglaya, Archie and Harry. Matthew very unfortunately had a problem with his shoes becoming detached and was unable to finish – one of the technical complications of indoor rowing!

In the Mixed Relay races, things became even more exciting, especially in managing the change-over smoothly, which counts in the overall time. The staff started things off, rowing 2000m, and it was a hard-fought race, with Graham winning and Wallace and Bruce finishing in second and third places just 0.4 seconds apart. Bruce dominated in the F7 and F8 Mixed relay races, but there was a lot of exciting jostling for positions along the way!

We were delighted to welcome back former pupil Fergus, now at Fettes and training as part of the British Rowing PDA programme (on real water!) to hand out the prizes. Hopefully an inspiration to pupils who enjoy this sport that they might want to take it further. Thank you very much to Fergus for joining us and we’ll be looking out for you in the future! And thank you and well done to all our competitors.