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JuniorTukkie November 2021
TuksSport
TuksSport High School is producing world-class athletes By Ms Hettie de Villiers (Principal of TuksSport High School)
If the names Tatjana Schoenmaker, Gift Leotlela, Michaela Whitebooi, Clarence Munyai, and Sox Sakwakwana sound familiar, it is because you might have seen them during the July television broadcasts of the 2020 Olympic Games. All five of them are TuksSport High School alumni.
The 2020 Olympics was ‘our’ best Olympics! This primarily was because Tatjana Schoenmaker made the TuksSport High School and the whole South Africa proud, by bringing back both a gold and a silver medal! For good measure she also set a new world record in the 200m breaststroke.
Tatjana Schoenmaker wins gold and sets a new women’s 200m-breaststroke world record
Her performance made people curious about what journalists referred to as the ‘high-performance school’ or merely ‘the sports school.’ But 2021 wasn’t the first-time learners from TuksSport High represented the country at the Olympic Games. Since 2008, one or more
On Friday, 30 July 2021, Tatjana Schoenmaker (a TuksSport High School matriculant and TuksSwimming Academy graduate), won the women’s 200m-breaststroke final with a world record time of 2.18.95 at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in Japan. The Tuks-based swimmer broke the Danish swimmer, Rikke Møller Pedersen’s time (2:19.11) that was set in 2013 at the World Aquatics Championships. Tlotliso Gift Leotlela
TuksSport athletes had been part of the prestigious Olympic Team, often while still at school. The Olympic Games are not the only platform where our learners excel. During the World Junior Athletics Championships held in Kenya in August 2021, the U/20 relay team set a new world record in the 4 x 100 metres event. Two of the four athletes, Benjamin Richardson and Mihlali Xotyeni, are currently in Grade 12 at TuksSport High, and a third athlete, Sinesipho Dambile, an alumnus.
