A SCHOOL’S sporting stars are celebrating after being selected to represent Yorkshire in three different sports.
Students from Ripon Grammar School have undergone trials in netball, girls’ football and triathlon and are now on track to be coached and to compete at the highest level for their age groups.
Netballing sisters Sarah, Emily and Katie Reed, together with Jessica Merrin, Rosie Taylor and Phoebe Senior, have been selected to play for the county.
They were chosen to compete against 240 other girls at trials held at York University for places in Yorkshire squads and will now play teams from other counties.
“We’re on a development pathway which, as we get older, might take us to the regionals and, eventually, England,” explained Rosie.
The Reed sisters are following in the footsteps of their mum Debbie, who coaches Ripon Rockets.
Ball skills of a different kind have taken 12-year-old Bethan Ratcliff to the North Yorkshire Girls’ Centre of Excellence in football. Soon to become Yorkshire Belles, Bethan’s U13 squad has played against teams at Teesside, Leeds, Sheffield, Everton, Liverpool and Manchester United.
Bethan, who joined Ripon Panthers when she was nine, said: “I’ve always kicked a ball around and when my brother Luke started playing I decided to go to the club as well. Eventually I’d like to play for Doncaster Ladies or Arsenal.”
Triathlete Toby Osman, 14, of Winksley, was selected for the Yorkshire and Humberside Talent Academy after trials held in Sheffield in which he had to swim 200m and run 1,500m.
“It means national recognition and the next step would be the England academy squad,” said Toby, who only started training seriously a year ago on joining Ripon Grammar School and is hoping to emulate the champion Brownlee brothers.
Earlier this year he qualified for a place in the UK U15 championships held in Birmingham, then came in the top 30 in the U14s English championships at Donington Park in Leicestershire.
“I’m best at running, I enjoy the cycling and dislike the swimming the most,” he admitted.
Toby, whose dad is also a triathlete, runs three times a week, cycles twice a week and swims four times a week, once in the pool at Ripon Grammar School and three with Richmond Swimming Club.