SPORTS ROUND UP- 9th to 17th March

Busy Few Weeks for PE department

It has been a busy few weeks for Congleton High School’s PE department with success coming in a variety of sports.

CHS' Indoor Rowers at the School Games

Yesterday (Tuesday 17^th March) five indoor rowing teams from CHS represented Sandbach School Partnership in the Cheshire and Warrington School Games, competing against teams from schools across the region. CHS took twenty students to the games and returned with a fantastic twenty medals, finishing in the top three in all but one of the categories that they entered. The year 9 boys and girls both won bronze, the year 10 girls also won bronze and the year 10 boys won gold, despite being 14 metres behind the leaders going into the last leg but Johnny Adderely produced a superb effort to secure a gold medal with CHS finishing one metre ahead of second place. There were also several individual successes with year 9 students, Ethan Johnson and Helena Cresswell winning silver in the individual events and Megan Sheard and Ramtin Musah winning bronze. Megan is actually in year 9 but she stepped up into the year 10 team at the last minute. Mrs Salt said, “I am really proud of them, everyone did really well. Getting to that stage with all five teams we entered is brilliant. Even the commentator at the event said ‘Congleton have brought some class’”.  

Last week, Congleton High School’s rugby teams took part in the Rugby Emerging Schools festival. Mr Cross thinks that the team is “still developing” and added that it is very hard to beat the better teams when you play less than seven fixtures annually. However, he hopes that this will improve next year with the creation of a rugby league between local schools due to start next year. This will see regular fixtures for the year 7, 8 and 9 rugby teams.

Mr Cross was pleased with the progression of the rugby team that took part in the festival with the rugby being played “miles better” than last year and more “expansive”. He recalled one particular try which saw CHS advance from their try line to the other in just four phases before crossing the try line. The future is definitely bright for CHS’ rugby teams.  

In netball, CHS continued their domination with two of CHS’ netball teams crowned South Cheshire Netball Champions, after year 9 and year 8’s A-team won the South Cheshire Championships. The year 8’s B-team completed a CHS one-two finishing runners-up. This continues what has been an already great year for CHS’ netballers with the under-18 girl’s crowned South Cheshire Netball champions last October and over recent weeks CHS have recorded clean sweeps of wins in league matches.

The year 9 boy’s football team progressed to the next round of the South Cheshire Cup last week after a 5-1 win against local rivals Holmes Chapel, thanks to goals from Finley Jackson, George Johnson, Elliott Darmon and a brace from Harry Pointon. Sam Byram was named man of the match for a solid individual display.

There has also been a surge of students looking to improve their fitness (or just wanting a “beach body” for the summer), with fitness training available for students on Monday, Wednesday and Friday lunchtimes as well as a boot camp on Wednesday after-school.  

CHS’ PE department continues broadening and extending the number of sports in which students can participate in and the first ever watersports trip is due to take place in July this year with students trying out a variety of watersports including kayaking, windsurfing and sailing at Tossa de Mar, located on the Costa Brava, in Spain.

Of course I have to mention the male PE staff (Mr Naylor, Mr Cross, Mr French, Mr de Souza and Mr Donnelly) aka 'No Direction', who headlined Congleton High School’s Red Nose Day last Friday for Comic Relief much to the delight of their many fans.

Male PE staff aka 'No Direction'

They are still waiting to hear from their agent whether they have been handed a recording contract by a major record label. But after their performance any record label would be foolish not to sign up such a talented and ‘good looking’ band!

Written by Adam Bailey