THREE Prior Park Prep School pupils swam their way to the IAPS Swimming championships earlier this month.

In March, five Prior Park Prep pupils entered the regional round for the IAPS Swimming Championships at St Mary’s School in Calne.

Emily Jiminez-Williams, Megan Knight and Henry Pearce, all swam their way to the finals, meaning they were in the best 16 swimmers of their age group in their event across all of the IAPS schools in the country.

The IAPS Championships is the biggest school swimming event of the year and is the school’s main target meet for the academic year. It requires competitors to qualify for the event earlier in the year and for each race the 16 fastest swimmers in the country are invited to compete in the nationals in May.

This year around 4,000 regional swimmers across the country attempted to qualify, which was subsequently whittled down to 300.

The three swimmers from the Cricklade school went to the K2 arena in Crawley and rose to the challenge, coming away with some commendable results. Knight came 15th in the under 12 freestyle and Jiminez-Williams 11th in the under 12 backstroke.

Pearce, who recently won eight golds and one silver at the Wiltshire County Championships, swam the race of the day for Prior Park, earning a bronze medal in the under 10 butterfly.

Headmaster Mark Pearce said he was very proud of all of the performances.

“I believe passionately in the importance of sport as part of an all-round education for pupils and gaining these results at a national championships event is testament to the hard work and dedication of our children,” he said.

“We have excellent facilities at Prior Park, including an outdoor heated swimming pool which allows pupils to enjoy supervised training on site.

“What is really exciting is that we have a talented crop of younger swimmers who with the training behind them and the experience of this year will hopefully go on to do some great swims at future IAPS rounds.”