Project sparks swimming boom in Thames Valley District - Background
Background
The groundwork started in 2005 when SportsForce Swimming Development Officer Christine Jolly started her job
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There was low morale among clubs in the Thames Valley region. Clubs didn’t participate in regional events and there were no coaching programmes. There was no pathway to develop either regional or national level swimmers. Clubs worked alone.
Clubs were initially very suspicious when approached by Christine. “All of a sudden they had a person turning up where there had been no-one before. They thought I’d tell them how to run their club,” she says. “Some responded straight away but others took a year to respond to emails.”
There were some keen club members out there but they weren’t in possession of the strategies needed to revitalise their club.
“Some had done a one day Swimming NZ course,” says Christine. “But when they had gone back to their clubs they did not have the support of an experienced coach to help put learnings in place. They had to make do by themselves.”
Christine got to know people at each club by getting out and talking to them. Key drivers were identifying the club’s needs and then finding the right people in the clubs with the passion to learn.
One of the big challenges was facilitating the building of relationships between the isolated clubs. “Firstly we worked on forming a cluster with the 6 clubs” says Christine “This was done by initiating activities that brought the clubs together so the coaches were networking.” a 7th club -Thames was not included in the cluster as it was considered to be in good health. However, through this relationship building process, Thames Swimming Club did provide the members of clubs in the cluster with access to their heated pool during the colder months.
Updated | 10 Oct 2008.
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