Cheshire & Warrington School Games

Wilmslow High School hosted the Cheshire & Warrington Winter School Games event on the 15th March. 150 young people in school Years 9 to 11 – from both mainstream and in Mixed Learning Difficulty and Severe Learning Difficulty event classes – competed in the indoor rowing finals.

The event was supported by 15 Junior Rowing Leaders from Weeverham High School who looked after everything from event registration, helping teams get setup on race machines to starting the races and live race commentary.

In the Year 9 events, Sandbach High School  pulled off a 1st and 2nd place, with Beth Dutton holding off her team mate Anya George to take home the gold. In turn, Anya managed to hold silver medal by just one metre over Katie Maddock from Hartford high School representing Vale Royal. In the boys’ event, medals were split over three areas with Kevin Mason from Helsby High School (representing Cheshire Oaks) taking the gold ahead of Jake Turner (Representing Macclesfield) and Casey Brown (Representing Warrington 1).

The MLD and SLD events began with the classification of each competitor into categories based on their rowing ability, with everyone first racing over one minute to achieve an overall ranking. Racing was then split into three different events, with Class 3 (low ability) racing over one and a half minutes, Class 2 over two minutes and Class 1 over two and a half minutes. This lead to wins for Abigail Smith (Warrington 1), Nigel Wicks (Crewe & Nantwich) and James Smith (Vale Royal) respectively.

The level of competition throughout the day was very high, and medals were spread across a number of different teams. At the end of the individual events, Warrington 1 and Vale Royal were both sat at the top of the overall medal tables with six medals apiece – one clear of Crewe and Nantwich, who were closely followed by Chester Oaks on four, and Macclesfield and Sandbach both on three.

The relays came next, teams of four racing over 2016 meters. The Year 11 girls’ final was a close battle between Sandbach, Vale Royal and Macclesfield with all three teams within 20 meters of each other before Sandbach moved in for the win inside the final minute.

The race of the day, however, was the Year 10 boys’ relay. Crewe & Nantwich and Vale Royal found themselves locked in a battle for silver – matching each other stroke for stroke over the course of the whole race, before Crewe & Nantwich edged it by 0.2 seconds at the finish line.

Daniel Hetherington

Indoor Rowing Development