EUROSPORT 2015 NEWS

By Jose Carlos

Updated: March 19, 2015

Dear Parents and Students,

This year’s Eurosport 2015 took place in Luxembourg I and the sports chosen by the organising school were Basketball, Table tennis, Volleyball and Aquathlon (Swimming 50m and Running 1000m).

Our organisation of the participation for Eurosport 2015 had started two years ago with so, so many extra hours dedicated to practices, trainings, matches and tournaments in all the different sports by all teachers, students and parents involved.

During this time our students had to cope with both the academic work and the preparation sessions for Eurosport. This was done of course with the support of their parents who drove them during late hours to the swimming pool in Headington lasting until 10pm every week for over one year, collected students late when arriving from away basketball games during the week and also on weekends, just to mention a few examples.

At the beginning of the competition all students were anxious to start playing and from day one through to day three of Eurosport in all sports it was visible that our teams were very well prepared but also that the level of the competition was very high. It is worth to mention just some performances from our teams:

– The girls basketball team started in full steam after losing the first game to Brussels 2 only to be stopped in the semi-finals by the competition after eliminating Luxembourg 1, a big European school.They qualified for the small final to be played on Saturday 14th March in which they finished 4th.

– In table tennis all three mixed double teams have battled game by game for points for our school and in the end they came 7th after competing against some highly ranked players. One of the players of the other schools is, for example, ranked nationally as the 10th in Spain. So a very good participation from the team.

On Saturday the students had realised how challenging this marathon of multi-sport competition was and some injuries and knocks started to appear. But our students were keen to keep their enthusiasm, commitment and determination for the last day of competition. It went from playing 5-8 games of Basketball, Volleyball and Table tennis games on Thursday, followed by the same amount on Friday, to a very early start on Saturday.

– At 9.30am the team relay swimming competition started with 20 students in a very crowded Olympic pool with 14 teams swimming at the same time in very choppy water. The atmosphere was unbelievable with plenty of noise from all the supporters in the most awaited event of Eurosport 2015. 28 points were in dispute for the first place down to 1 for the last placed team. Our students were aware of our tradition and previous Eurosport results of our school – 2nd place in 2011, 2nd place in 2013 and they wanted to keep the tradition and show the opposition that they were real contenders. From the start in swimming our swimmers kept our school close to Varese and Brussels 3, from the 10th swimmer Varese was only one more length ahead and ESC second up to the last swimmer when Luc Bouet nearly got close to the swimmer from Varese but then finished just seconds behind him. We finished 2nd in swimming with 12m15s three seconds from Varese who finished with 12m12s.

– In the second part of Aquathlon in 1000m relay running at 11am our runners gave everything they had to get to first place. It was great to see the togetherness between the team members in supporting each other in such very physically and emotionally intense event.
In the end we finished 2nd with the overall result of 1h21m behind also a very good team from Varese with 1h20m.

– Clara Kantor received the individual award of most valuable athlete in Girls Aquathlon. This was fantastic as Clara had a knee injury the day before and she had to overcome this adversity. Well done to her.

We finished overall 7th with excellent results – a 2nd place in Aquathlon (swimming and running), 4th in basketball, 7th in Table tennis. Overall 7th, but very close to the 5th place with only 3 points difference. Our result was particularly good having in mind the size of our school and the level of the participants in this year’s Eurosport.

This was surely for our students one of the best and thoughest sports experiences. In the few days after returning it is still visible in the feedback from students how important Eurosport was for them. Ultimately all the hard work, determination  and good team spirit paid off!

The students from our school have contributed greatly to the high standard and quality of the event, please see in detail the results on a PDF file below:

http://www.euroschool.lu/eses2015/Documents/results-booklet.pdf

Looking back to this year’s Eurosport both myself and Mrs Sladden can say it was worth to dedicate so many hours of our time to this wonderful  group as it is great to see the positive impact on students. They surely had a great time in Luxembourg and made plenty of friendships and also gained sympathy from several other schools both on and off the court.

We do hope that these students transfer this positive experience and enthusiasm to PE and will hopefully be 30 good ambassadors of Sport at our school.

Sincerely yours,

José Carlos

Physical Education & Eurosport Co-ordinator

results-booklet