Primary school pupils from across Wiltshire and Gloucestershire came together in Swindon today for inaugural West Counties Primary Panathlon.
The first inter-county Panathlon competition to be held in West Country saw 48 children from five schools compete at Isambard College.
Gloucester’s Hempsted School were clear winners and crowned the first West Counties Primary Panathlon champions. The remaining places were very close, with only three points separating the two teams from Swindon’s Brimble Hill School in second place and fifth place.
The young competitors enjoyed discovering new games and learning new skills, as the teams rotated around eight sports – Messi football, volleybat, kurling, parachute popcorn, boccia blast, precision beanbag throw, target cricket and flight path – before the day ended with the relay races.
Two Gloucestershire schools – winners Hempsted and Cirencester’s Paternoster School – were selected for the regional competition from Gloucestershire’s Primary Panathlon programme, that involved almost 300 children across the county between February and June.
Isambard College was the venue for Wiltshire’s first Panathlon competition back in 2009, so it was good to be back there to break more new ground, for Wiltshire’s first Primary Panathlon and of course the West Country’s first inter-county regional Primary Panathlon.
10 Isambard students ran the day as Panathlon young leaders, doing a superb job at officiating and supporting the competition, so a big thank you to them.
Special thanks also to the Zurich Community Trust for supporting the competition.
The overall results were as follows:
1st. Hempsted C of E Primary School, Gloucester
2nd. Brimble Hill School, Swindon
3rd. St Nicholas School, Chippenham
4th. Paternoster School, Cirencester
5th. Brimble Hill Barbarians, Swindon
6th. Larkrise School, Trowbridge
