Private School News

Sporting Schoolgirl of the Year

Talented Farnborough Hill student, Georgia Peel, has been named ‘Sporting Schoolgirl of the Year’ in the School Sport Magazine awards. This follows her award of the Michael May Cup for the single outstanding performance in 2008/9 by the Hampshire Schools’ Sports Federation.

Georgia’s achievement was to win the English Schools’ Athletics Association national 1500m title for Intermediate girls. What was remarkable about her achievement was that she smashed a 30 year old record by running the race in a time of 4 minutes 16.24 seconds, beating the record by almost 8 seconds. Georgia’s time represents a phenomenal 2 seconds a lap improvement on a record that has stood the test of time from famous athletes who have gone on to win medals many times on the World stage. All of this from an athlete who is still young for her age group in the competition and so has the chance to improve again on her record next season.

The Hampshire Schools’ Sports Federation write ‘This is quite an outstanding achievement, probably the best performance by any young athlete last season across the whole nation.’ Phil Tusler, publishing editor of School Sport Magazine said: “This has been a remarkable year for competitive sport in schools and the awards are a celebration of that. We had hundreds of nominations this year and deciding the winners has been a difficult but very rewarding endeavour. Georgia is a real talent for the future.” Sarah Buckle, Headmistress of Farnborough Hill, says ‘We are incredibly proud of Georgia’s achievements. She is immensely talented but also extremely modest. She trains very hard and the whole school cheered when her award was announced in Assembly this morning. Georgia is at present in Qatar having been selected to run in the ISF World School Athletics Championships. This is a great opportunity for Georgia and the whole school wish her well.’