Visakha & St. Joseph’s National School Games Swimming Champions

After two days of exciting action at the Sugathadasa Indoor Sports Complex, Visakha Vidyalaya and St. Joseph’s College Colombo emerged champions of the 2016 All Island School Swimming Championships that concluded this evening.

Both schools who were leading the tally at the end of the first day of events enjoyed a dominant second day winning by a huge margin of overall points. Visakha Vidyalaya finished their School Games episode with 70 points overpowering the Kandyan dominance held by Mahamaya Girls College who took the runners-up spot with 36 points. Similarly, St. Joseph’s College’s amassed a total of 61 points in the competition and runners-up St. Peter’s College had the privilege of getting only 31 points.

Visakhian swimmer Ramudi Samarakoon finished off with two gold medals in total with her winning the Under 15 Girls’ 100m Freestyle this morning. Vinoli Kaluarachchi of Sirimavo Bandaranayake Vidyalaya who got disqualified unfortunately on the first day, got her rhythm back this afternoon winning both the Under 17 100m Freestyle as well as the Under 17 50m Backstroke.

The Asia Schools silver medalist Peterite Akalanka Peiris was the top performer in the entire competition winning all of the individual events he participated in. Winning two medals on the first day, Peiris went on to add two more to his tally winning the Under 17 100m Freestyle and the Under 17 50m Backstroke. The champion swimmer bowed out of the competition with four coveted gold medals under his name.

The Under 19 Boys category was a battle between Imesh Chaturanga of D. S. Senanayake College and Dilanka Shehan of Nalanda College. Shehan went on to win the Boys’ Under 19 100m Freestyle and came second in the Boys’ Under 19 50m Backstroke clocking 30.59. Finishing the 50m-meter race with a timing of 29.09 was Imesh Chaturanga to take the gold medal honours.

Vinoli Siriwardena was Mahamaya’s only successful swimmer in the competition winning the Under 19 50m Butterfly event and the Under 19 50m Backstroke.

Visakha clean swiped all of the relay events winning everything on offer. The Visakhian under 15, under 17 & 19 relay teams won their respective 200m Freestyle relays, which were one of the rare occasions where a single school had the privilege of winning all three relay events on the same day.

St. Joseph’s had the opportunity of winning the Under 15 200m Freestyle relay while Lyceum International School Wattala took the under 17  relay event and marking a finish to the two-day tournament, Trinity College Kandy walked away with the Under 19 title. St. Joseph’s finished second in both the under 17 and 19 relays and that aided them to finish on top of the table.

 Final Points Table Girls 

 Final Points Table Boys