This website uses cookies to enable our site to work and to improve your experience. We also analyse the pages visited. By clicking “Accept”, you agree to our website’s cookie use.

Shelburne

Shelburne Spring Term- part one

9 February 2024 - Shelburne

After Shelburne’s incredibly successful end to 2023, bringing home the Commendation Shield and achieving second place in House Sport, the dawn of a new year has brought a wave of anticipation and excitement for what 2024 has in store. The girls have returned fuelled by the promise of a fresh start and many have embraced this opportunity to set targets for growth and self-improvement. Below are some of the goals the Shelburne girls are striving for this year:

  • Attend more enrichment lectures and careers events.
  • Keep up with writing down one memory from every day.
  • Get an England Lacrosse trial.
  • Improve my organ playing.
  • Be better at recycling paper.
  • Participate in more House activities.
  • Spend more time learning my spanish vocabulary.
  • Improve my violin playing to achieve my Grade 8.
  • Move up from B-team to A-team lacrosse.
  • Achieve my Grade 8 piano this year.
  • Make fewer impulse-purchases.
  • Improve my public speaking.
  • Regularly make more revision flash cards.
  • Get to know the younger girls in House better.
  • Get more involved in MUN.
  • Drink more water.
  • Always take my own plastic bags to the shops.
  • Watch my opponent more closely in squash to improve my game.

House Chapel Service

The annual House Chapel Service presents a fun and exciting opportunity for the Shelburne girls to work together on a team project and to showcase their talents in speech-writing, public-speaking and musical performance to the rest of the School. Led by our wonderful House Sacristan Felicity, Shelburne took inspiration from ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’ for their service on the theme of Generosity. Through carefully selected extracts from the book, as well as hymns, Bible readings and music, the girls conveyed the personal and communal benefits of compassion and giving to others.

The House Anthem ‘You’ve got a Friend in Me’ from Toy Story was selected by our House Conductors Selin and Francesca to reflect the theme. The girls put a lot of time and energy into the rehearsals and it came across beautifully in the chapel.

A big well done to our readers: Felicity, Radha, Nell, Dara, Stella, Mij and Izzy, and to Kate, Henrietta and Claire for their instrumental contributions to the service on the Flute, Organ and Piano respectively.

House Sport

This term has been a very busy one for sporting commitments, with almost every Shelburne girl representing the House or the School in running, swimming, badminton, squash, netball, lacrosse, skiing and dancing. Here are some sporting highlights of the term so far, as told by the girls involved:

Skiing

On Friday 26 January, Laeticia, Stella and I headed out to Flaine for the British School Girl Ski Races. After two days of race training and our instructors coaching us, we quickly got the swing of racing again and felt ready for our races in the following days. After an amazing day of giant slalom, we got ready for the slalom races, which we absolutely smashed! Then came the prize giving, where I came first for U18 unregistered slalom, and the A team, including Laeticia and I, came 3rd in U18 unregistered team slalom and 1st overall unregistered team. Overall, it was a great trip with some fantastic successes. (Annabelle)

Dance

On the 14th of January, Felicity, Kate, Zara, Anabelle, Laeticia and I were part of the biennial Senior Spotlights performance. The performance consisted of a variety of dance including hip hop, tap, ballet and modern. The girls from LV upwards had been practicing for the entirety of autumn term resulting in an incredible show with a lot of enthusiasm, talent, and courage evident on the stage. My personal highlight of the show was our senior ballet company performance to an extract of Romeo and Juliet which showed class, poise, and perfection from all the dancers. Everyone had a blast at rehearsals with many memories made and much laughter had. We hope to see you all there next year for highlights! (Maya)

Cross-Country

Running house cross-country for the first time was a little nerve racking, especially as we had to go first. We had our face paint on and our minds set to winning. The PE Staff blew the whistle and we were off! It was a tiring first few minutes but we pushed though the steep hills and rocky grounds. As we ran down the hill, we heard people cheering  from the sidelines, we thought we were almost done but remembered we had two whole pitches to run! When we were nearing the end of the race, we could see lots of people gathered around the finish line. We had a sprint to the end and an uproar of cheers from our House team as we crossed the finish line. We were done but not for long.

The PE Staff called out for the time trial runners to get to the start line. Some of our Shelburne teammates called over to us; they were encouraging us to run it again! We looked at each other and knew that we should go for it. We had a plan to walk the entire thing but in doing that it would gain us more house points. Again, we got to the start line and they blew the whistle, We let everyone go by us as we did a slight jog at the beginning. We then stopped and started our walking, trying to jog some of the time. We had jogged past a few people so were not completely last. As we approached the steep hill down to midget pitch we could hear the enthusiastic cheering from the crowd. We did a finishing sprint at full speed and finally finished the race. It was a great experience (though extremely tiring) and we are so excited to do it next year. A huge congratulations to all the Shelburne runners, with special mentions to Emily and Veryan who came 1st and 2nd respectively in the senior race. (Nelly and Emmy)

Swimming

Despite illness, injury and other commitments meaning some of our key swimmers were out of action, Emily M did an amazing job as House Sports Captain in organising the team. Shelburne rallied together in true house spirit to get the job done, with many girls making a splash for the first time in a few years. A special mention must go to Eve (UV) who stepped in at the last minute, and swam brilliantly in the 25 metre breaststroke, winning her heat. Penney (LIV) was our star swimmer, competing in the 100-metre Individual Medley against some very tough competition from other houses, as well as both the 50-metre breaststroke and butterfly. What an incredible undertaking for a LIV! In the relays, we had a strong start with the second house team winning their medley relay heat by a significant margin. Unfortunately, we were so eager to get to work in our first house freestyle relay, that we were overcome with excitement and sadly got disqualified on our takeovers. Despite this, our House Spirit was not dampened, and it was wonderful to see the house pull together in adversity. (Miss Tay)

Evening Activities

The usual range of the girls’ favourite activities has continued to be offered in the evenings this term, with a few additional opportunities for baking. Girls enjoyed making pizza swirls with Mrs Wilson and I at the beginning of term, designed a ‘fish cake’ in House colours for the weekend inter-house competition, and more recently got experimental with some unconventional pancake topics…

This week we sadly say a temporary goodbye to Mrs Wilson, who has been snapped up by Rubens to act as their Resident Matron until Christmas. She has been a stalwart member of our family for the last couple of years and the girls and staff are incredibly grateful for all that she has contributed to Shelburne. She will be incredibly missed for this period, but we wish her the very best of luck for her new role and hope to see more of her around the campus with her dog, Alfie! We look forward to welcoming her back into the fold next January.