This week we had a chat with Olivia Gamble, Head of Sport, after the success of the Interhouse Swimming Carnival on Friday and her first major sports event for the year. Olivia will be in the role of Head of Sport while Emma Wood is on maternity leave.

What was your biggest challenge?

The biggest challenge for the swimming carnival was all of the logistics of the day. Getting 1000 students to HBF stadium, then having all events running was quite a feat. We were also using a new scoring software system this year, meaning a few changes had to be made in how the recording was organised.

It is a very slick event, how many races did we have during the day?

We had 171 events on the day including both the main pool events and the novelty events.

How many girls participated?

We had 987 girls attend the carnival.Were there any records broken?

Yes we had a lot of records broken on the day. A special mention goes to our Year 7 swimmers, who broke a total of six records on the day. Ava Forrest in Year 7 broke three records! A list of records broken is shown below.

Which House is in front at the moment.

At the moment O’Donnell is in front, however, I can say that it is very close between all of the Houses, so we are excited to see what will happen after the Years 5 & 6 Carnival in Week 5.What was the highlight of the day?

Although the records that were broken were fantastic, the real highlight was the staff team winning the staff vs students relay event.

Here are the results: “The Santa Maria interhouse swimming carnival is always an anticipated event, where the Houses compete in both races and team spirit. The day was lots of fun, the main pool races and the novelties generated a competitive nature, in both students and staff, particularly amongst the House Coordinators. The highlight of my day was seeing everyone, especially the Year 12s, getting involved and lifting the House spirit, with the over-the-top costuming and screaming cheers, encouraging the younger girls and showing them what they have to look forward to in their future years.” Keely Hebiton, Sports Captain