Winning medals besides the exposure will be a big bonus for Saint Thomas Primary School when they dive into competition at the Fiji Primary and Secondary Schools National Swimming Championships this Friday.
The Lautoka school is fielding 17 swimmers, eight female and nine male, for the annual swimming tourney.
Contingent manager Synthia Prasad highlighted the broader meaning of what their participation would garner for the young team.
“Our message here is that we all keep trying our best and we remain humble in whatever we do and when we do our part, we show dedication, we show commitment, we show patience towards each other,” Prasad said.
“We are not hungry for medals.”
Preparing themselves to face the many competing schools required a prolonged period of training and she explained the length of time it took to train the youngsters.
“We started training two weeks before Easter; the 10th week of school in term one and since then we’ve been training,” she stated.
“We even trained during the first term school holidays.”
While the team prepared diligently, it wasn’t without its fair share of challenges which Prasad had to find her way around.
“Some of the challenges that I faced while I was trying to get the students out of the classroom to come to the club, the pool for training was that sometimes these kinds of activities clash with other activities,” she explained.
“Sometimes there are so many other sports going on and you know (with) students interest, they want to take part in all the sports.”
A challenge she observed in the students was the way they had to balance their studies with time for training and devotion to religious activities as well.
“Since we come from a Catholic school, we also have church commitments to how they balance themselves out in the classroom, in church, at home and at the pool,” she said.
Despite this, she was grateful there were some students who chose to embrace the activity of diving into the water competitively instead.
“Fortunately, they chose swimming because they had a vast interest in the sport,” she said.
She applauded the parents of the swimmers for assisting the students by preparing them for it and having a timetable set out for it and other activities.
The swimmers and team officials are enthusiastic about their trip down from the Sugar City to Suva and are grateful for the helping hands extended to them by a wide-ranging support system.
“They have supported us in whatever way they could and now we are ready to travel to Suva to take part,” she added.
“They have supported us in whatever way they could.”
The support system in question: the school, former scholars, current parents and guardians and the wider Saint Thomas Primary School community.
Meanwhile, the school team for the championship will depart Lautoka tomorrow for Suva at 7am.
The championship will end on Saturday and takes place at the National Aquatic Centre in Suva.
