It is with great pleasure I reflect on the 2024 Interhouse Swimming Carnival. Eight keen Houses took on the challenge to win the ultimate glory, the House Champion Shield. Held at Cockburn ARC on Tuesday 5 March, nominated swimmers competed in an array of events. The Carnival took a fresh twist with some new and exciting challenges with fun races in store for our nominated swimmers. Students gave their all while competing for their Houses, fostering House spirit and sportsmanship. It is a credit to our students who demonstrated a high-level of competition, fun and excellent behaviour throughout the day.
Expanding from the 50m Freestyle, Breaststroke, Backstroke, and Butterfly and 4x50m Relays, this year saw three new races placed in the mix which engaged and extended swimmers in multi-year group races. These races included a Junior and Senior division Male and Female 100m Freestyle Race, 4x 50m Medley Race and the College’s first inaugural Blue-Ribbon Race.
The inaugural Blue-Ribbon Race sees the fastest male and fastest female from every House compete in a 50m Freestyle Race. Each competitor is selected after their initial 50m Freestyle heat in the morning. It is an outstanding achievement to qualify for this race, and I would like to commend each swimmer who represented their House proudly. In two extremely close races, full of anticipation and House Spirit, only two winners could be named. Congratulations to the College’s fastest 50m Freestyle male swimmer, Jacob Monaco (Year 8), and fastest 50m Freestyle female swimmer, Viola Arangio (Year 11) who were each recognised with a blue-ribbon medallion to acknowledge their outstanding efforts in the pool.
Students earn points for the House Champion Shield by involving themselves in an array of 100m and 50m events. In a day full of close races, with a lot of heart and students giving it their all, it was a tight battle between the Houses. The leaderboard consistently updated throughout the day. There was however one House who stood beyond the rest, demonstrating incredible depth across all events and who battled it out to win five of the ten relays on the day. With a back-to-back Interhouse Swimming Carnival win, congratulations to Mr Nicholls, the Teresa Student Leaders and all students that competed on the day who became the 2024 Interhouse Swimming Champion House.
A crowd-favourite and much-loved part of the day saw the return of Tassie Devil races. Kicking it off in style, our Year 12s started with a new inflatable Bin Chicken Race on Ibis Inflatables. Additionally, we saw many relays including lifejacket and kick board relays, and of course the annual Bommie contest! The activities were enjoyed by all and saw excellent cheering, support and camaraderie between Houses. Congratulations to Romero House who emerged as winners of the 2024 Tassie Devil Award, a deserving winner. Well done to Mr Stevens and the Romero students on their outstanding efforts across the day.
As always, we like to acknowledge the outstanding individual performances by students at the carnival. Congratulations to all of our Individual Champions shown in the table below.
Each year we see an incredible group of students come through with talent and skill in the pool. 2024 was once again another year for the record books! In which we saw three (3) records broken for the day. It is incredibly exciting to see the talent continuing to emerge at our College. Jacob Monaco was impressive in the pool all day, and broke all three new records. Jacob broke the 50m Freestyle Record in the morning, and then surpassed his own record later in the morning after the Blue-Ribbon Event.
This event was not possible without the great work of many across our College Community. A big thank you must go to the Physical Education department and Student Sport Leaders for their help on the lead up to the carnival.
My thanks go to Ryan Henley, Lily Plunkett, Teresa Cosgrove, Kate Crudeli, Ben Sokol, Zoey Baxter, Sam Herrmann, Mary Elder, Marlee Hedley, Dave Townsend, Justin Cordingley, and Lauren Holland for their efforts across the day to ensure everything ran smoothly. House Coordinators were exceptional, generating House nominations, driving House Spirit, and doing an outstanding job on all fronts, thank you for your contribution.
A further thank you to our vendors who helped across the day. Recently, our College have become partners with South Lake Dolphins (SLD) Swimming Club. We are extremely lucky to have had so many SLD and P&F parents generously give their time to assist on the day as officials. We look forward to continuing this partnership in future years to come.
This year, saw an excellent live broadcast of the event by David & Rebecca Macrae’s (ECC Parents) business Local Media Services Company. In collaboration with our student media team, the broadcast was excellent and seen by many families across the world. Well done to our student media team who were involved in the broadcast, excellent commentary of the event, and took pictures throughout the day. A big thank you to David and Rebecca Macrae, Basil Psanoudakis and Tristan Forsey for their hard work and efforts for this event!
Lastly, a final thank you goes to our College Community who are always so supportive and passionate of our events inclusive of the Swimming Carnival. We are glad to see spectators returning back at the Carnival and hope many families also enjoyed the live coverage of the event which can be watched again below.
Mrs Celina Dormer
Head of Sport