Westminster School - Sport ("Station")

Sport ("Station")

The School has three Eton Fives courts, located behind Ashburnham House. The school frequently fields pupils as national entries in international competitions in rowing, or "Water", and fencing.

Westminster School Boat Club is one of the oldest rowing clubs in the world, located on the River Thames. The Oxford University Boat Club uses Westminster's boat house at Putney as its HQ for the annual Oxford and Cambridge boat race on the Thames. The boathouse was remodelled in 1997, and won a Wandsworth design award in 1999. The school's colour is pink; Westminster rowers raced Eton College for the right to wear pink. The story goes that, at one annual Eton-Westminster rowing race, both crews arrived wearing pink, which was fashionable at the time. The Eton crew bought some light-blue ribbon (which later became the standard Eton colours) to differentiate themselves, but the Westminster crew won the race and the right to wear pink in perpetuity. The premier Leander Club at Henley, founded in London by a number of Old Westminster rowers, later adopted it, although they call the colour cerise. The only problems arise when racing against Abingdon School, who also wear pink.

The School's main sports ground is nearby at Vincent Square, but it is limited to football and cricket on the main area and tennis and netball on the courts; it also hosts a playground for Westminster Under School. It is not large enough for all the pupils doing these sports to use simultaneously (the football pitches are made into cricket pitches for the summer). Therefore the school hires and owns other sporting facilities near the school. These include the oldest boating club in the world, an astroturf ground in Battersea, and a fencing centre. 'Green' (Dean's Yard) is also used, as are the 2 school gyms (one in the Abbey Cloisters and one in the Weston's school building) and the three Fives courts, as well as informal "yard cricket", "yard football" and "Scuba Football" played in Little Dean's Yard.

Westminster played in the first school cricket match against Charterhouse School in 1794 and from 1796 played cricket against Eton.

Westminster has an historic joint claim to a major role in the development of Association Football, which remains the school's largest sport. During the 1840s at both Westminster and Charterhouse, pupils' surroundings meant they were confined to playing their football in the cloisters, making the rough and tumble of the handling game that was developing at other schools such as Rugby impossible, and necessitating a new code of rules. During the formulation of the rules of Association Football in the 1860s, representatives of Westminster School and Charterhouse also pushed for a passing game, in particular rules that allowed forward passing ("passing on"). Other schools (in particular Eton College and Harrow) favoured a dribbling game with a tight off-side rule. By 1867 the Football Association had chosen in favour of the Westminster and Charterhouse game and adopted an off-side rule that permitted forward passing. The modern forward-passing game was a direct consequence of Westminster and Charterhouse Football.