Congratulations to Tariq Bethune (Grade 9) – participated ‘Indian Ocean All Stars Challenge’ in Perth, Australia on Saturday 30 and Sunday 31 March. The 15 year old had to swim on a relay team with and against 17 year olds and the relay team won a bronze, a silver, and 2 gold medals in their four 200 m races.  In individual events, Tariq achieved a personal best time of 2:13:76 for 200 m of freestyle.

SWA entered three swimmers in the annual JAAC meet on Saturday 16 February, a swim meet hosted by the British International School featuring 6 schools and 150 swimmers.  SWA’s swimmers were Tariq Bethune (Grade 9), Zachary Bethune (Grade 7), and Faiq Alfatkh (Grade 10).  Faiq is returning to swimming after several years off and did an incredible job of shaving 8 seconds off his time to create a new personal best time.  In a swimming race, competitors who swim at a similar rate are placed in the same heat.  There are several heats for the same race and the fastest swimmers always go in the last heat.  Showing remarkable improvement, Zachary swam in the last heat in each race.  He also came away with improved times.  Tariq went to the swim meet with one goal – to earn a gold medal for SWA.  He did that four times, being the fastest boy in his age group from all six schools in the four events he competed in.  These included:

50 m Butterfly 32:12

50 m Freestyle 26:82

100 m Freestyle 59:35

100 m Individual Medley 1:12:46

Adam (Grade 11) received an award from NASA as a Cassini Scientist for a Day competition held by NASA earlier this year.

The Cassini spacecraft recently orbited Saturn and Adam who is a budding scientist in his own right (check out his latest iBook on the WriteNow Bookstore) wrote a project on Pan one of the moons of Saturn and the F- ring of Saturn.