Royal College’s diving team became champions in the recently concluded 45th Sri Lanka Schools Aquatic Championships held at the Sugathadasa Stadium, Colombo.
The winners scored a mammoth 209 points followed by Thurstan College (39 points) and St. Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia (31points). The team was led by third year coloursman Isiwaruna de Silva with Sawinda Dissanayake as his deputy.
Royal collected their points across all the age groups from under-9 to under-19. In the under-9 category Minuga Hettigamage won third place in the 1-meter spring board. Senuja Ranasinghe dived to win first place in the 3-meter spring board and third in the 1-meter spring board in the under 11 category while Yusuf Shihar won second place in both the 1-meter and 3-meter spring boards. In the under 13 age group, Induwara Gunawardena collected 24 points for Royal with one gold medal and two silver medals while Venuka Kankanamge and Thenuwan Meegalle added ten and five points respectively. Matheesha Marambe, who won the best diver trophy in the under 15 age category, was first in the 1-meter springboard, 3-meter spring board and Platform. Yamith Jayakody and Akindu Samaraweera contributed ten and five points respectively in the same age group for Royal.
The Under 17 best diver Abhisheka Meegalle won one gold, one silver and one bronze medal each for Royal while Nithila Illukpitiya in the same age group won a silver medal in the 3-meter springboard and bronze in the 1-meter springboard.
Seniors in the under-19 contributed the most number of points for Royal with Dulanjan Fernando, a third year coloursman and a national team diver at the 10th Asian Diving championship in Japan winning three gold medals in all the events he contested.