Porirua swimming sports grows participation and ability

Over the past 2 weeks’ schools throughout the Porirua area have been taking part in school cluster swimming events.

The cluster events are run collaboratively with Porirua City Aquatics, Swimming Wellington, Swimming New Zealand, and DASH Swim School with each playing an important part in the success of the event.

This was the third year for the cluster events with every year seeing greater participation from schools and an increased swimming ability overall.

The Porirua Cluster event was run slightly differently this year to ensure all students who wished to participate could do so. Events included sculling races and lifejacket races as well as freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly races before finishing off with relays.

Schools who participated were Te Kura Maori O Porirua, Windley School, Rangikura School, Glenview School and Titahi Bay School.

Medals were also given out for the relay teams who finished first, second and third and to the boy and girl from each age group who had scored the most points for their school.

In recognition of the effort that all the children had made, medals were also presented to children who showed good sportsmanship and demonstrated a positive attitude towards swimming. The students who received these awards were from Rangikura School, Glenview School and Windley School.

The Year 5-6 trophy was won by Titahi Bay School and the year 7-8 trophy was won by Te Kura Maori O Porirua.

This year saw students from Plimmerton School, Papakowhai School, Discovery School, Adventure School and Pauatahanui School all return to take part in the Parumoana Cluster event with Postgate School also joining for the first time.

The Parumoana cluster consisted of Year 5 – 6 events and Year 7-8 events that included freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly events. There were also relays for each year group. Plimmerton School won both the Year 5-6 and Year 7-8 trophies.

These event have continued to grow every year and could not be possible without the support of all the organisations involved as well as the volunteers from Porirua City Aquatics with many of them taking time off work to help out.