SPORTS BULLETIN
Spring 2023
Welcome to the Sports Bulletin, an update of our students’ sporting achievements and a snapshot of this year so far.
Go to the Sports website for details of fixtures and follow us on Twitter @WycHighsports
Team Success
Hockey
U12
The number of students attending year 7 hockey club has been growing throughout the year with the majority starting it for the first time. The players have shown huge progress in their hockey skills, teamwork, and confidence in matchplay. The U12A team finished the season on a high, performing very well in the District Hockey Tournament; two wins, two draws and two losses. The U12B team also finished strong scoring their first ever goal in the final match of the season! In March, the U12 squads had a special visit from GB international hockey players, Sophie Hamilton, Liv Hamilton and Martha Taylor, who coached them goalscoring and 1v1 elimination skills.
U13
Many new people joined the team this year and despite not playing as a team very much, we all played together well. Despite some of the unfortunate and unlucky match results, we managed to power through as a team and sneaked in a few goals too. We can tell that the whole team has improved so much this hockey season with not only solo skills but with teamwork and hockey spirit! We are so excited for next season and to improve even further!!
U14
This season has been extremely encouraging and strong for the U14s team. We started off with not many people who had played hockey before and ended with a huge amount of improvement from everyone. Throughout, we built amazing team spirit and morale that gave us incredible motivation for all the tournaments and training we took part in. Our skills have widely developed with the team's hard work and the addition of our new hockey teacher, Miss Spence, who has helped us so much this year at every session.
In October we had our first district tournament, where we played against other local schools. We won and drew most of our matches with a couple of close losses for the team. We recently played in the District County Hockey Tournament; we won two matches and lost two matches. We were happy and proud with the results. We had a great year and can’t wait for the next! In May, we will be participating in the U14 England Hockey National State School Tournament, in Nottingham which we are really looking forward to.
U18
This year the U18 team has been led by our Captain Emma Turrell and Vice-Captain Rosie Windsor. The Season started with our first cup match against Cokethorpe. Unfortunately, a close loss against them knocked us out of the cup, however we persevered and looked forward to our next match in the plate tournament. A welldeserved win against Magdalen college saw us through to the next round, when unfortunately, a loss against St Edwards knocked us out of the plate as well. Despite this, the U18 team has enjoyed training indoor and outdoor this year as well as competing in a county indoor tournament. We are going to continue training throughout the summer and are hopeful for a successful season next year!
U16
This hockey season we have competed in a variety of fixtures, most of them being rounds of the cup tournament. We suffered a few losses such as round one against headington but overral we played super well and played as a team! We ended the season with the District Tournament held at Amersham where we had an overall success. We won against Aylesbury and pipers but lost 2:1 to Becky high. For our final game of the day against borlaise, we played hard but unfortunately it ended in a loss due to penalty flicks. But overall we finished 4th! This season we all worked really hard and played our best and we look forward to what the next season will bring!
Swimming
Having already seen huge success at the ESSA relay championships and a very strong start to the District league last term, this term, our swimmers were looking to end the season with the same success they started it with.
To begin this term, The Junior, Inter and Senior teams all competed at the last qualifying rounds of the District League. Each team competed at two qualifying galas. At these galas, our swimmers raced in individual and relay events, where they scored points based on their position in each race. The points scored were combined and the top 6 highest scoring schools, from the Junior, Inter and Senior categories, then qualified for the final. During the first two rounds, the Juniors performed exceptionally and qualified for the final in 1st place with 150 points, a 4-point lead over second place Dr Challenors High School. Our Inters, with 122 points, and Seniors, with 145 points, also qualified for the final in 3rd and 2nd place, respectively.
- Lucy Gay and Ella Neil-Dwyer (U14 Team Captains) - Isabella Blake (U16 Team Captain) - Hannah Saunders (U18 Team Vice-Captain)On March 15th, all three teams competed at Wycombe Abbey School in the final. Limited with numbers due to the strike day, our teams performed incredibly well, with the Juniors finishing in 1st, the Seniors 2nd and the Inters 4th and an overall position for Wycombe High School in 2nd. Well done to everyone who competed in this league, we saw many of you step up and produce some amazing swims. The final results were tight, and we are very proud! A special well done to Emilia Duell, who broke the 50m free inter record, Hannah Gartshore and Summer Martin for some very strong performances in the Junior races, and Phoebe Hudson who stepped up to race for the inters in the 50m backstroke at the final. Despite being younger than all other competitors, she finished 3rd and scored some huge points for the team! Well done!
Swimming this term didn’t end there. The Junior A’s, the Inters and the Seniors also raced at an invitational gala at Wycombe Abbey on 18th February. This gala highlighted the talent of Wycombe High school’s swim teams, with all teams taking home medals and Wycombe High School finishing 1st overall!
Amongst all the team success our swimmers have shown, all the hard work they put in leads itself to many individual successes too. Tia Lomas, Caitlin Ireland, Tanzim Chen and Emilia Duell are all looking to qualify for summer nationals this year both in open water and in the pool. We also have most of our girls racing at the South East Regional Championships at the beginning of May. Good luck to all those competing!
Thank you again to Miss Harris and all the PE staff who have given up their time to attend these galas, we really appreciate it!
Netball U12A
Our season has been busy from district tournaments to league matches, we had a great start to the season winning the seeding tournament at Great Marlow School, as well as this we competed in our first cup match against Headington School and we lost 25-28 which knocked us out to the cup and into the plate competition. We had our first start of season tournament at Wycombe Abbey school on the 12th October where we finished 1st place! The next match against Oxford High School as the first match of the plate which we won 23-12 which sent us to the second round of the plate. We had lots of league matches leading up to Christmas which we won most of them. The second round of the plate competition was against Beaconsfield High and we won 24-10 to put us into the third round of the plate. We had our third round match against St Albans this was a tough match but sadly we lost 32-33. We were now in the shield and this was the quarter finals against Queens Wood, we lost 18-21. Meaning that we were knocked out of that tournament. The season was drawing to a close with the district tournament, a tough competition but we managed to win the tournament! This win qualified us for the district finals in Milton Keynes on Thursday 30 April, we played brilliantly and finished the term with another tournament win, scoring 95 goals in the tournament and only conceding 13! We look forward to coming together next year as an even stringer team!
U13A
The U13A netball team have had a mixed season, however as we grew as a team over the season we managed to win enough matches to qualify for the semi-finals finishing in 4th place overall! Some of our best wins were against Sir William Borlase (18-2) and Barking Abbey (14-5). Thank you to Jan, Annabelle and Jess for coaching us this term and we look forward to next year!
U14
U13B
This netball season we did great; we worked really well together as a team and got some great results. The matches we played were very good with some great wins and when we lost, the scores where always very close. At the beginning of the year, we had a tough start playing many A-teams, but that didn’t stop us! As we got further into the season, the team really pulled together and became a lot closer. This really helped our performance going forward. At our district tournament, we did really well overall, coming 4th out of 12 teams - a great result to end the season on! I would like to say thanks to the team for putting in lots of effort and to our coaches Jan, Miss Thomas and Miss Harris for helping us in training.
The U14 netball team this year have done really well on the whole for this season, winning all but 3 of our matches most of which where also quite close. We have taken part in many tournaments including districts which we took 1st place in winning all our matches by quite a lot. Another one we played in was the County Schools Tournament which you had to place in the top 2 to go through to the regional round. We managed to come 2nd with Wycombe Abbey placing 1st. Then on the 28th January 2023, we took part in the Regional round of the schools tournament where we all knew that’s we’d come up against tough competition but we still did extremely well. We were in a group of around 6 teams and had to place in top 1 or 2 to go through to the finals which then led onto the National round. However we didn’t manage to place into this category. We came 3rd or 4th in our group and the matches we lost were not by a big margin. As the only non private school in our age group at the tournament meaning they get much more training time in a week, we did amazing. Having said all of this there is always room for improvement which means that we can come back even stronger and go again next season. From the whole U14A team (Maddie, Niamh, Emily H, Sophie, Camilla, Mariette, Holly, Eliza, Sasha and Emily L) we are so grateful for Jan who has coached us this whole season every week and been there at every tournament and match, and then also Miss SaintSmith for taking us to matches, coaching at points and being overall really supportive.
- Amaya Patel (U13A Team Captain) - Sophie Haigh (U13B Team Captain) - Maddie Clark (U14 Team Captain)U15
The start of the season was rocky as we were a newly formed team playing teams that have played together for a long period of time and as a result of this we lost a few matches but as we fought through we improved greatly and started closing the point gap more and more and ended our season with a win against Great Marlow School with a magnificent score of 18-7 to us!
We took part in the district tournament which we fought hard for, winning 3 out of 6 games placing us 3rd
I feel as though our team has bonded and grown together but I would like to give a special mention to who I feel has most improved: Maryam Hussein.
Thank you to the range of sports teachers who dedicated their time to us by coaching, umpiring and driving us to our matches. Here is to an even better year ahead of us, well done girls!
Gymnastics
This year has been a very busy, successful year for gymnastics at our school! The start of the year was spent choreographing and learning competition routines, where each member of gym squad chose their own piece of floor music to compete to. Our first competition was the BSGA Milano Floor and Vault competition on the 22nd of January, where we had three teams that competed. The U13 team consisted of Matylda Wolska, Felicity Challenor, Ellie Lam and Elodie Knight. The U16 team consisted of Tanzim Chen, Evie Eyres, Julia Puka, and Salma Raja, and U19 consisted of Tallulah Challenor, Ella Catchpole, Hollie Cotton, and me. Each gymnast in the team competed an individual floor routine and vault, then the top 3 scores were used towards the team’s overall score. Teams then performed a group routine, either a quad or trio, which demonstrated a range of dance series, group balances and skills all coordinated together as a team. Each of the teams did incredibly well, with the U13 and U16 placing 4th against other South region schools and a special mention to the Year 7 gymnasts whose first time it was competing for the school. The U19 team had an extremely successful competition placing 1st overall, above Becky High and qualifying for the BSGA National Finals in Stoke on Trent, which took place in March.
The next competition was the BSGA Floor and Vault on the 29th of January, where two teams competed, both U14 and U19. Both teams consisted of five gymnasts who each competed an individual floor routine and vault, with the top four scores for each apparatus going towards the final score. This competition was very tough and being against schools like Newland’s and St Mary’s made it very hard to place or qualify for nationals. At this competition only first place was able to qualify for Nationals and in both age groups this went to Newland’s.
A bit later in the year, on the 10th of March, the U19 team travelled to Stoke On Trent to compete in the BSGA Milano National Finals, where schools from all over the UK competed against each other in a group routine, individual floors and individual vaults. We started the competition on floor where Ella, Tallulah, and me each performed our individual routines. Then Hollie, Ella, and I each competed two vaults and our scores were averaged. We finished the competition with our U19 Quad routine, which went very well, and we fell in no balances! This was our schools second time in two years qualifying for nationals, so we were pleased to come 7th overall out of the 14 teams, and second in state schools’ teams, especially considering some of the incredible talent we were against.
Once competitions had finished, Gym Squad lunchtimes were focused on putting together exciting routines for Highlights. The routines showcased some of the competition routines from the year, a senior group routine, a junior routine and many more. Not to forget our trampette routine, which was a thrilling opening to the second half! We had lots of fun putting these routines together and most importantly loved performing them on the night. I have had an incredible time leading Gym Squad over the last three years and wouldn’t have been able to do it without each of the gymnasts amazing talents. I hope that gym squad has a very successful year next year and I am excited to come watch the next highlights in two years’ time!
Football
U13
The U13 Football team enjoyed a strong County Cup run which saw them qualify top of the group. In the quarter finals they played an extremely close game against strong opposition but came out on top 2-1 winners due to a late winning goal. Sadly, they lost in the semi-finals to the eventual winners of the competition. The U13 team have got to the quarter finals of the English Schools F.A Cup after dominating in the previous rounds. This is the furthest WHS have ever been in this competition.
Highlights
This year we have been so fortunate to see the return of ‘Highlights’ gym and dance show following COVID, and what a show it was! Across the two nights we had full audiences watching the array of talent WHS has to offer, including bollywood, tap, street, lyrical and jazz pieces, to name a few. Everyone involved worked so hard to put on such an amazing show with rehearsals every week in our lunchtime clubs. Many students also choreographed and showcased their own pieces in ‘Spotlights’ alongside pieces from Dance Performance Group, Senior Dance and Junior Dance to show the high level of talent throughout all year groups! I
U15
The U15 football team had a tough run in the County Cup which saw them knocked out in the group stage. They responded well in the national cup and plate competitions dominating the early round and getting to the quarter finals in the SnS National Plate which will take place in the upcoming weeks.
U16
The U16 football teams County Cup run started by narrowly getting 2nd in the group stage by goal difference. This meant we advanced to the quarterfinals which we dominated, winning 3 0 against Dr Challoner’s. Consequently, we then played the semi-finals against Walton High which we travelled to Milton Keynes and won 1 after getting a late penalty. Then finally we had the long-anticipated final against Chesham Grammar School that we unfortunately lost 0 which marked the end of our season in the county
t was a fabulous two nights and the show was thoroughly enjoyed by all involved and a great opportunity to showcase what the students achieve outside of the classroom. Of course none of this could have happened without Mrs Urquhart who coordinated the show and ensured everything ran smoothly, and we are all so grateful for the time she has dedicated to the show and our dance clubs. A huge thanks also goes to Miss Harris and Miss Williams for their help backstage and throughout the rehearsals also
Olivia Walker (U13 Team Captain) - Nikol Angelova (U15 Team Captain) • Lucy Crawshaw (Dance Captain)Staff Success
Hockey
I play for Buckingham Hockey Club in the England Hockey Premier Division, the highest league in English hockey. We had a challenging outdoor season, falling short against some of the top teams in the country. Despite a tough season in the outdoor, we were very successful in the Super 6’s Indoor Hockey Championships. After two weekends of qualifiers in January, we got through to the National Indoor Finals hosted at the Copperbox Arena in the Olympic Park. We played against East Grinstead HC, the reigning champions, in the semi-finals and managed a 4-3 win to secure us a place in the finals. We were up against Repton HC in the finals, whose line-up included German international players and Olympians, Janne Muller-Wieland and Sonja Zimmermann. We lost in the finals, meaning we finished 2nd best team in the country. The finals weekend was an amazing experience, and I am very proud of what we achieved as a team.
- Miss Spence (Teacher of PE)CrossFit
Our very own Miss Harris (Teacher of PE) took part in the CrossFit Quarterfinals with her teammates and they have qualified and will be representing Great Britain at the CrossFit semi-finals in Berlin in June.
The European quarterfinals required Miss Harris and her team to compete in 5 workouts across two days of competition, testing them on a range of fitness components, from maximal strength to gruelling endurance tests. The team managed to place 14th in Europe with the top 40 being invited to semifinals.
Miss Harris and her team mates face a tough six weeks of training ahead, they will be fighting for a top 10 position at the semi-finals, the top 10 will be incited to the CrossFit Games World Championships!
Key Dates
UK Sports Tour: Friday 9 June Sunday 11 June
Adventure Sports Tour: Thursday 15 June — Sunday 18 June
Boodles: Tuesday 27 June Saturday 1 July
Sports Day: Wednesday 12 July
Sports Day Reserve: Friday 14 July
Sporting Achievements
We would like to celebrate your child’s sporting achievements outside of school. Please email us at office@whs.bucks.sch.uk with the success stories for inclusion in the next edition and / or if you would like to become a Friend of Sport to help with fixtures, events, etc.