A TALENTED team of swimmers is celebrating winning a town gala – after several years of narrowly missing out.

The team from Hummersknott Academy, in Darlington, were awarded the winning shield at the recent Darlington Secondary Schools’ Swimming Gala.

For a number of years the school has won either the boys or girls competition, but never earned enough points to take the overall shield.

However this year saw the team win the title with a total 295.5 points – 4.5 points ahead of their nearest rival.

A spokeswoman for the school said: “There were many good individual swims, but special mention must be made of the relay teams who performed exceptionally well, winning nine out 12 of the events.

“The town swimming gala is a superb event allowing a large number of students to compete and represent the academy. Many of the competing students put a great deal of effort into training for the event, in their own time, before and after school.”

Stewart Souter, head of PE, added: “It was a superb performance from the team who held their nerve in a gala that really did go down to the last event of the evening.

“The students were a credit to the academy and they will be doing their very best to hold onto the trophy in next year’s gala.”