Students from St John the Baptist Catholic School in Freshwater are making waves – quite literally, in the case of the senior girls’ relay team, which scored a bronze medal at the NWPSSA Swimming Championships in May. The team, made up of Zara Kasprowicz, Ava Sycamore, Ruby Lovell and Izzy Bromford, broke a fifteen-year drought to take out third place. It’s not just sport the students at St John the Baptist are also excelling academically with the school being recently highly ranked among Northern Beaches Primary Schools for 2018 NAPLAN. The local newspaper, the Manly Daily, looked at the combined Year 3 and Year 5 results for reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation; and numeracy to determine how schools ranked overall.
The school continues to enjoy a banner year across the board for sporting achievements. In AFL, Wilson Casey represented NSW while fellow Year Six student Louis Abraham came first in the U13 Men’s division in Tumbling in NSW, and was also selected for the National competition. Sadly, a broken leg kept him from competing. Sienna Kupceric represented the State at the Australian Athletics Championships.
PE teacher Niki Frost said that it was the best year for sport in the school’s history. “In past years we’ve had one student per year state level but there’s never been as many as this year.”