High standards expected at St. Joseph’s swim meet on October 21

Josephian swimmers are preparing to battle it out amongst themselves when they hold their Inter-House swimming meet that will be held on October 21 in their pool at Darley Road.

The chief guest at this year’s meet will be the Rector, Rev. Fr. Sylvester Ranasinghe.

St. Joseph’s College is well known to produce champion swimmers over the years who have gone on to represent the country at major international events such as the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, South Asian Games etc. winning places.

They have made it a habit of winning schools championships over the years. They were Sri Lanka Schools Champions for three consecutive years, Age Group Champions, National School Champions and Junior National Champions. Several of the present swimmers have performed well at National and International meets, amongst them are Milinda Wickremasinghe, Nilmin Arasukularatne and Ashane Fernando at the South Asian Games held in Colombo. Rehan Jayasekera participated at the second Asian Schools Swimming Championships held in Hong Kong in July. Wickremasinghe and Fernando swam for the first and second places respectively at the Ambalangoda Sea Swim.

These two lads also swam for the third and first places respectively at the Mount Lavinia Sea Swim. Milinda Wickremasinghe and Nilmin Arasukularatne represented Sri Lanka at the Commonwealth Games held in Melbourne, Australia.

It is also interesting to note that 14 swimmers from the College squad have been selected for the annual meet to be held in Chennai, India in November.

Ashane Fernando has been selected for the Open Marathon Sea Swim this month. This has been possible due to the untiring efforts of coach Ruwan Manawadu who has also been appointed as the Sri Lanka National Swimming coach. He was in Australia for the Commonwealth Games and was engaged in coaching the Sri Lanka squad preparing them for the South Asian Games.