St Paul’s swim from Barnes to San Francisco!

On Monday 30 November St Paul’s School pupils and staff joined up with Barnes Swimming Club to swim from Barnes to San Francisco!

The challenge, which took place across two weeks, was led by Head of Elite Swimming, Roxana Roman and former Head of Aquatics for St Paul’s, Stefan Bill. Stefan who now heads up a swimming squad in San Francisco, CA, arranged for his team to swim half the distance from San Francisco, with the St Paul’s and Barnes team picking up the distance east of the Atlantic.

The 200 strong team completed the swim of 8,608,381 metres, with each member swimming 88 lengths of a 25 metre pool, every day across 10 days.

The swim was in aid of the Children’s Ark project in Rwanda, which aims to build the first community Montessori nursery in Kigali, Rwanda, and flagship early learning in this beautiful country, scarred by genocide.

Over £8,000 was raised in total for the charity. One St Paul’s boy, Jimin Robinson, raised GBP 1181.56 alone, squeezing in lunch time and after school swimming in a hectic term, to complete the challenge. All the boys who took part were extremely motivated and learned a lot through the process. A fantastic achievement for all who took part!