On Friday 16th February the Samui sharks travelled to Thanyapura, Phuket for the Thanyapura invitational hosted by Rocket Science Sports.
This was a three day meet which kicked off on Friday evening with the open water swim. This was a grueling event which was quite physical, students showed bravery to swim shoulder to shoulder with their opposition and performed admirably. Following that, there were two days of competition on Saturday and Sunday.
It was a challenging weekend for the Sharks against some tough competition, some of our opponents were training for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo so the standard was very high, but as usual the Sharks did us proud. We finished 5th out of 14 schools that had travelled from all over South-East Asia. Many of the swimmers recorded multiple personal bests and an incredible eleven school records were broken.
These sharks just broke the school record!!
Petr Volkov (Year 4) had an incredible swim in the 50m breaststroke with a time of 53.13 breaking the longest standing school record that has stood since 2014.
Taisiya Lavrenkova (Year 5) seems to break a school record at every meet she attends, this time she broke the record in the 200m freestyle (3:09.91) and the 100m freestyle (1:24.23). This is an amazing feat considering she is 9 years old competing in the 9-10 age category.
Kya Mylonas Healy (Year 10) broke the record for the 13-14 year old girls in the 50m freestyle with a time of 1:18.15 and also improved on her own record in the 100m Butterfly with a time of 1:32.88, this was a strong showing from Kya.
Seraphina Lees (Year 5) set a new record for the girls’ 9-10 100m butterfly with a time of 1:56.87, the first time a girl from ISS in this age category has completed this event.
Egor Peresvetov (Year 4) broke the school record for the 50m backstroke in the boys 8 and under category, this is a special result for him as the record had stood since March 2015 and this was Egor’s first ever meet.
Last but not least is Tom Maestracci (Year 8). Tom did his usual trick of consistently breaking multiple school records. This time Tom took FOUR school records in the boys' 13-14 category; the 50m backstroke (36.35), the 200m butterfly (3:02.00), the 100m butterfly (1:18.40) and the 50m butterfly (33.24). Excellent work Tom.
Other sharks brought home special medals
Here is a list of the individual swimmers who won medals at the event, well done all:
Bronze medalists:
June Anestad (Year 9) Girls 13-14 100m Breaststroke
Paul Eric Larson-Drozd (Year 9) Boys 13-14 200m Butterfly
Seraphina Lees (Year 5) Girls 9-10 200m Backstroke
Kya Mylonas Healy (Year 10) Girls 13-14 100m Butterfly
Silver medalists:
Oak Arnasiri (Year 9) Category: boys 13-14 - 50m Breaststroke
Sandra Groven (Year 9) Category: girls 13-14 - 200m Butterfly
Tom Maestracci (Year 8) Category: boys 13-14 – 200m Butterfly
Petr Volkov (Year 4) Category: boys 8 and under – 50m and 100m Breaststroke
Gold medalist:
Taisiya Lavrenkova (Year 5) Category: girls 9-10 – 200m Freestyle, Silver – 400m Freestyle
I’m extremely proud of everyone’s performances and I’m looking forward to the next meet, the Thanyapura open swim league session 3 on March 10th.
Coach Mark