Sports News

Athletics

It has been a spectacular week for St Paul’s athletics, with no less than three school records being broken.

Charlie Pama (Lower Eighth) set things spinning on Tuesday at a home match, breaking the longest-standing athletics record in the senior boys discus. His mark of 41.06m added over 1.5m to a record that had stood since 1960! On Wednesday evening, Charlie Nicolson (Fourth Form) kept the pace going by setting (yet another) junior 1500m record at Watford. His time of 4 mins 8.77 seconds catapulted him up to second place on the UK U15 rankings – this comes ahead of the individual event national finals in two weeks. Then on Saturday Leo Popov (Fourth Form) sprang to another level when breaking the junior long jump record; his leap of 6.16m added 30cm to the previous best and moved him up to 5th place on the UK U15 rankings.

South-East Schools Combined Events (28 – 29 June 2025)

Congratulations to Leo Popov (Fourth Form), Andrey Serebryakov (Fifth Form), Zac Lam (Fifth Form) and Henry Whittaker (Lower Eighth) who represented Middlesex in high quality South East Combined Events Championships at Sutton Arena last weekend. Records were broken in all age groups, including a new national record in the inter boys octathlon. There were plenty of personal best from the St Paul’s athletes, and we are hopeful that Leo, Zac and Henry have qualified combined event national finals. Full results will be available here presently.

Individual scores and placings are below:
Leo – 9th in the junior boys pentathlon with 2413 points
Andrey – 17th in the inter boys octathlon with 3742 points
Zac – 7th in the inter boys octathlon with 4414 points
Henry – 7th in the senior boys decathlon with 3842 points

Cricket

A huge amount of cricket was played in the final full week of term, with St Paul’s teams defeating Dulwich College in nine out of ten encounters. 

On Saturday, the 1st XI defeated Dulwich by 3 wickets, with Fergus de Mestre (Sixth Form) the standout player. He took an incredible 7-28 with the ball, the finest bowling figures in at least 10 years for the school, before scoring an undefeated 44 to see the team home. The 2nd XI won by 5 wickets while the 3rd XI won by 8 wickets. A Shukla (Sixth Form) and Ashton (Lower Eighth) both scored half centuries while Bhargava (Sixth Form) took 5 wickets for the 3rd XI. In the U15s, the As and Bs both won while the Cs lost. Ridhmeet Puri (Fifth Form) scored 62 not out for the As, while Vandini (Fifth Form) scored 69 for the Bs and Kurup (Fifth Form) took 4 wickets. All three U14s sides also claimed victory. Trichur (Fourth Form) took 4 wickets for the As, while Cheung (Upper Eighth) scored 71 runs and Kohli (Fourth Form) took 3 wickets for the Bs and Wright (Fourth Form) scored 48 for the Cs. 

As part of the Saturday fixtures against Dulwich, both schools ‘turned cricket red’ to support the Ruth Strauss Foundation. Collectively, we have currently raised over £1,500. 

Earlier in the week, on Thursday, the U15s were in action against Tiffin School. The As were defeated, meanwhile the Bs and Cs both won. Ranvir Puri (Fifth Form) made 69 runs for the A while Patil (Fifth Form) took 4 wickets including a hat trick for the Bs and Mahajan (Fifth Form) scored 42 for the Cs. 

On Tuesday, a one-off U16 team played in the annual T20 competition with Hampton School, Dulwich College and KCS Wimbledon. In the first round, the team lost to a strong KCS side, however in the 3rd/4th play off the team defeated Dulwich by 116 runs. Ranvir Puri scored 92 runs and A Shukla took 4 wickets. 

Swimming

London Youth Games, 29 June

Congratulations to Shunsei Kwan (Fourth Form) who won a Gold medal in the London Youth Games Aquathlon (Year 9 Open) event held at the Olympic Park on Sunday 29 June. It involved a 300m swim and a 2.46km run.