The summer term always hits the ground running, packed with athletics, cricket, and tennis, as our PE department aims to get as many girls as possible participating on the school grounds.
One of the highlights of the athletics season is travelling to the GDST Athletics Rally. Despite the early 5:30am departure and late return, the trip to Nottingham to compete alongside other GDST schools is a complete highlight.
With 44 girls from Years 5 to 10, supplemented by additional Year 5 and some Year 4 pupils due to the absence of Year 6 who were in France, the pupils headed north to Nottingham.
The Harvey Hadden Stadium is always a fantastic venue, and the pupils aimed to replicate or surpass our 2023 silver medals. We succeeded, standing out among the 25 GDST member schools and bringing home silver medals for our combined athletics team.
Amongst this excellent team performance were two standout moments. There is a centralised set of GDST Athletics records, some of which have stood for decades; the oldest has been on the records since 1994. Two Year 9 girls broke two longstanding GDST records. Tess Hepple broke the Year 9 75m hurdles record with a time of 11.13 seconds (this record had stood since 2013), and Fayo Olatunde broke the Trust Year 9 100m record with a time of 12.53 seconds (this record had stood since 2002).
We are immensely proud of these individual performances, as well as our team’s overall effort, competing with the friendship and respect you’d expect among our sister schools.
We are already looking forward to the GDST Athletics Rally 2025!