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After a good sleep, and an early rise the group were up and eager to go. Not necessarily to the competitions, but to see what spread was being provided at the breakfast buffet! When we'd all had our fill and were ready to go it was discovered we had suffered our first loss of the day; Jasmine Liou had lost a tooth! Undeterred, TES set off to find some gold.

On the bus by 7 am and at the pool by 8am the  swimmers were in and warming up. Looking around at the competition it was clear that the day wasn't necessarily going to belong to us. It was always going to be difficult to top the wonderful efforts of last year's games at Taipei, but top it we did! There were great efforts all round and no one swimming group stood out such was the effort put in by all our swimmers. We started the day wonderfully with a huge chant which had the pool complex shaking with the might of TES. 

All age groups were outstanding and it is a huge pat on the back to all our fabulous swimmers, knowing the difficulties involved with getting together for practice, that we competed as well as we did, proud in the knowledge that we left the pool with a weight of medals. The relays especially were outstanding.  Individually our swimmers started the day superbly with Jade taking out a bronze medal in the opening 100m IM and then Shubh following that up with gold in the race 2, also the 100m IM. I'm flat out seeing 100m, let alone swim that far using all four strokes! Ellie bravely followed that up with a position just outside the medals and then Josh, a day after his birthday, became our second gold medal winner in only the fourth race of the day. 7 bronze medals in the next 7 races had us all thinking that this could be a great day for the boys and girls in blue, white and yellow! Those swimmers were Alicia, John (both 100m IM), Natalie, Tiffany, Sean, Gil (25m Free) and Jasmine (toothless of course) in the 25m freestyle. Chloe was the pipped on the post for 3rd in the following race.

 

I'll wizz through the remaining events, highlighting some of the outstanding races by the TES group: 

25m freestyle -  Yr 5 Dheeman silver, Jimmy 4th, Yr6  Hani silver, Nina Silver, Lenny 5th, Yuki 4th. 

25m Backstroke - Yr 4 Natalie 5th, Tiffany silver, Gil silver, Sean bronze, Yr 5 Chloe 4th, Victoria 4th, Jimmy silver, Matthew silver, Yr6 Nina silver, Elizabeth bronze, Yuki 5th, Billy bronze, 

25m Butterfly - Yr4 Jade bronze, Shubh Silver, Yr5 MAriangela 5th, Josh silver, Yr 6 Alicia silver and John bronze.

25m Breaststroke - Yr 4 Tiffany silver, Wendy bronze, Sean 4th, Lachlan 3rd, Yr 5 Jasmine 4th, Chloe 5th, Dheeman 4th, Jimmy 4th, Yr6 Nina bronze, Hani 4th, Lenny silver, Yuki 4th

4x25m Medley - Yr 4 girls silver and boys bronze, Yr 5 girls silver and boys gold, Yr6 girls silver and  boys gold.

50m Free - Yr4 Jade silver, Svante bronze, Yr5 Mariangelan4th and Josh gold, Yr6 Aileen silver and Axel bronze.

50m Backstroke - Yr4 Wendy silver, Jun Sung silver, Yr5 Charlene 4th, Milledge bronze (almost dead-heat with 1st and 2nd!), Yr 6 Aileen silver and Billy bronze.

50m Breaststroke - Yr4 Nikitha silver, Lachlan bronze, Ellie gold, Brian gold, Yr 6 Hannah silver and Axel 4th.

4x25m Free relay - Yr4 girls 4th and boys bronze, yr 5 girls silver and boys gold, yr6 girls gold and boys bronze.

Tyre relay - Yr4 gold, Yr5 bronze, Yr 6 bronze.

As you can see, not many races went by without a medal and even those that did were only split seconds off reaching one.

Lunch was taken at the next venue, the Dulwich Beijing sports fields where the athletics meet was to be held. Results were equally impressive at that venue but as yet we have not collated the results. When done I will post them here. As with the swimming it was another hugely successful meet for our champion team and one which again overshadowed last year's great results. All credit again to the strong will and determination of our students! Gold medals were abundant, as were the no less important minor medals and best times and distances put in by all our students when not winning medals. 

We returned back to the hotel at 7pm, 12 hours and many medals later! How we will ever get this lot through the metal detectors at the airport, we'll never know. 

Tomorrow sees the first of the team games, T-Ball which will also take place at the Dulwich College sports fields. We are all looking forward to another successful day and will fill you in on all our results this time tomorrow. Wish us luck!

The download for all images are here:

What an amazing day, we had our usual early rise and shine starting off the day with a great buffet breakfast. It was T-Ball day and we arrived at the beautiful Dulwich Beijing sports ground to the cheers of our loyal parent supporters with their horns and TES pompoms! The children got straight to work by playing in a series of T-Ball games which would determine which teams would make it to the finals. I never realised why we practised T-Ball so much during our ECA practices, but after our day today, I could see the huge part of the FOBISSEA games that the event took. Unlike yesterday,where individual medals could be won by doing your best for yourself, T-Ball really did require a lot of TTT- thinking, tactics and teamwork. Watching the Year 4s play was exciting and nerve racking at the same time...but they really did make a super team. Shubh was a quick thinking pitcher working really well with Gill on first base and Jun Sung as backstop. We had some great fielding by Sean, Svente and Lachlan with their good stopping and large throws. Well done to Tiffany who took a brave stop and blocked a strong hit. Jeni, Jade and Wendy gave some good hits and sprinted home. One tactic TES will definitely be remembered for will be its Stop and Scare tactic, which envied by others has been mastered by Natalie, Nikitha and Shubh but with varying levels of 'Scare'. 

The Year 5 T-ballers had a super day winning all four group matches (14-10, 16-10, 20-9 and 16-9) to set up a final against British School of Guangzhou. Having already beaten BSG in the group stage, TES were confident of gaining victory to clinch T-ball gold medals; however, BSG put up a brave fight with the final going right down to the wire until TES were triumphant (21-17). Throughout the tournament, the boys and girls played fantastically well as a team. The excellent Milledge was ably backed up by all the players in the field. With bat in hand the big hitting boys, were given excellent support by Victoria with nine runs in the competition, Charlene and Mariangela with great base running and stealing as well as magnificent all round performances by Chloe and Ellie. Well done to our second gold medal winners for the day!

Year 6, although not as ultimately successful as our two gold medal teams, should feel no less proud than the two other teams. The year six team started their day with a hard fought loss to the Team from Discovery Bay, Hong Kong. After finishing the first innings tied up at 9 runs each, Discovery Bay got away from us by 4 runs in the end. Not the start we wanted, but good to get rid of the cobwebs. Our second, third and fourth games were much more manageable with great wins over Harrow School, Beijing; Regents School of Bangkok and Bangkok International Preparatory School. Winning the final 3 games of course led us on a collision course with the Discovery Bay International School once more, this time in the final. We were confident and knew we only had to fix a few little errors and that the team would be super competitive. Fix those errors we certainly did, but unfortunately Discovery Bay also fixed their game as well! The final was a fantastic affair with DBIS taking a good advantage into the last innings. That was when we really woke up! John Park finished our innings with a home run, scoring runs for Hani and Nina at the same time, That gave us a lead of 6 runs which although not huge gave the team a glimmer of hope. TES started the final fielding innings with 2 wickets which gave us a huge lift and belief that the impossible was in fact possible. Alas it wasn't to be and the school from Hong Kong sneaked past us at the end to win by 2 runs. So close, but so far! All Year 6 players were outstanding with huge efforts coming in from all the girls, Hannah, Alicia, Nina, Hani (who took a marvelous catch in the last innings of the final), Elizabeth and Aileen: especially with their batting. The boys certainly didn't let us down and got better as the day went on. John was outstanding with his throwing, while Yuki, Tom, Axel, Billy and Lenny all took great catches during the day. Well done to all of our Yr 6 team and we couldn't have been more proud of the effort over the course of the day!

So, to sum up, all the hard T-ball practices paid off and Years 4 and 5 reached the finals with 4 straight wins, while Year 6 reached the final with 3 wins. Our boys and girls showed us what great team players they were by finishing with first place wins for unbeatables, Year 4 and 5 with Year 6 taking the silver medal by just a tiny 2 point difference. It was a proud day for our TES community and our team medals just prove what great teams we have...TES are the BEST! 

After a lovely medal ceremony, it was treat time and Harrow School Beijing hosted a great buffet barbecue for everyone.  The children really had a great time playing at Harrow school and mingling freely with the other schools and making new friends. The games continue tomorrow with running relays and the football tournament. It's going to be another fun packed day tomorrow, and with another 5.30am rise on the schedule..I'm looking forward to a comfy bus ride :-)