Three students from Donabate Community College recently represented Ireland in a life-saving competition held in Sheffield in England. The girls are members of the St. John Berchman’s Life-Saving Club, which trains in Sportslink in Santry. Michelle Butler (5th year) and Sophie Callender and Olivia Smyth (both 3rd year). The girls had come through the Republic of Ireland finals and the All Ireland finals to qualify for this competition at which there are sixteen regional teams from all over the United Kingdom for the Royal Life-Saving Society Championships (RLSS).
At underage level, competitors participate in pairs or in teams. Unfortunately, Michelle was out of luck in this year’s competition, which although disappointing given her great success in previous years, was still a fantastic achievement to represent Ireland. Olivia Smyth and Sophie Callender competed as a team and enjoyed great success in the Junior Girls category, bringing home gold and bronze medals and placing 6th overall in their category. The Irish teams also came 3rd of all the teams in the competition.
Recently, the girls were interviewed by Rachel Burke and Catriona Cooke (TY Journalism students) to find out more about the competition and the sport that is life-saving.
How long have you been doing life-saving lessons for?
Sophie: I’ve been doing life-saving since I was 4 years of age.
Olivia: I’ve been doing it for the past two years.
How often do you train?
We train every Sunday evening throughout the year. But when we are coming up to a competition we train on Thursdays and Saturdays as well. The training is comprised of a number of elements as we need to be able to swim, but we also need to be able to throw rope and we also need to have good first aid and CPR skills. So our training is varied.
What are you required to do during competitions?
There are four elements in the competition. First, there is a Water Initiative. For the water initiative we are locked away in a room while a situation is set up in the pool. There can be six or seven people in the pool and a couple of people on the bank of the pool. When we are released from the lock up, we have to quickly assess the situation and work as a team to rescue the casualties from the water, we have two minutes. We also may have to deal with casualties who are panicking, drowning or are very nervous (simulated).
Then we do a Land Initiative. We are presented with a situation where there will be a person who tells us there is something wrong with them and another casualty who we do CPR on, who is pretending to have hypothermia or a heart attack. The objective here is to assess the casualties and to treat them properly, within two minutes.
Then we have to do a swim and tow. That means that each of us has to swim 25 metres and tow our partner for 25 metres in the fastest time possible.
Lastly, there is a 10 metre rope throw. With this, we have to throw out a rope into the water to reach our partner who is 10 metres out and tow 
them in as quickly as possible. This is the most nerve-wracking event because if your partner does not catch the rope first time you have to keep doing it until they do, up to a time limit of two minutes.
How long does it take you to tow the rope in the water?
Our fastest times are around 11 seconds from throw to tow and back to the bank of the pool.
In the competition we won a bronze medal for the rope throw and a gold for the land initiative. We came fourth in the swim and tow.
Were there any other Irish teams in Sheffield during the competition?
No, we were the only Irish team. There were about 18 competitors in the Irish team. The competition went on for 2 days and started at 8.30 each day. It was tiring but rewarding at the same time. It was a great honour to represent our country and to hold the Irish flag when we won our gold medals.
Olivia and Sophie also asked us to mention the hard work their coaches put in to help them achieve their success. They are very appreciative of this.
Interview carried out by Caitriona Cooke and Rachel Burke. Thanks to Catriona and Rachel for their hard work and huge congratulations to Michelle, Sophie and Olivia – what an incredible accomplishment!
Further photos to follow!