Saturday 25 March, 2023, by Karen Dorey
KINGSBRIDGE KINGFISHERS SWIMMING CLUB NEWS
Hi All
Well what a year its been! When I started coaching again at the beginning of last December, the club numbers had fallen so low that it was touch and go that the club would survive. But we have and are coming back stronger and stronger! We have held four swim trials to get new swimmers into the club over the last year and now our swimmer numbers are up from 20 to 65 – it’s great to see the sessions well attended again. Our next swim trials are on Thursday 26th January 2023 at 6pm so if you do know of anyone interested please ask them to sign up by email either me or Adam Stewart on stewart2009@btinternet.com
Christmas dates
Our last session before the Christmas break will be Friday 16th December. Our first session of 2023 will be on Tuesday 3rd January.
Time Trials and Swim Meet News
We ran our first time trails for 3 years in July and my impression on poolside was that everyone really enjoyed it. Many thanks to all the new timekeepers whose help was invaluable. A few of our top swimmers swam at open meets this year and were very successful winning medals and setting a number of personal best times. The final meet was run by Plymouth Leander over the last couple of weekends and six of our county qualifiers entered the meet to gain experience of racing in a large meet. My husband was away to I was allowed out to play, so I coached all three days of the competition! It was great to see our swimmers perform so well and get used to warm ups, briefs and debriefs (otherwise known as pep talks – thanks Lucas!) and swim downs. They were long days, but even so our swimmers were able to set personal best times throughout the meet and also gained more Devon County qualifying times. I also had a wonderful time catching up with coaches I had known from eight and more years ago!
Club Captains
We normally choose our Club Captains by swimmers votes, but with so few older swimmers in the club we made the decision this year to select Jess Stewart and Aaron Lansdale since they are our two oldest regularly competing swimmers.
Club Championships
Our last Club Championships was held in 2019 so it was important to get the highlight of our racing calendar back up and running again. It was wonderful to see so many of our swimmers enjoying the racing – quite a few asked to swim in extra events. It was good to see Mat Cusack back on poolside with some of his swimmers from Dartmouth and I hope that this continues as a new ‘tradition’. Many thanks to all our poolside helpers – we couldn’t run such an event without you. Many thanks also to George and Adam for running the cake sale and raffle - we made around £555 from the cake sale, raffle and kit sales. Thanks also to our Skins prize sponsors Gob2b Limited and Café Asia and many thanks to Will and Conor who donated their Skins prize money back to the club! And finally many thanks to all of our swimmers who made the Club Championships the friendly and happy meet it was.
Presentation Evening
To those of you unfamiliar with this event it is normally held every year as a big club party which includes not only plenty of food and dancing but also presentation of the Club Championships trophies (first, second and third in each age group) and most improved swimmers in each squad. The Presentation Evening will be held on Saturday 25th February – the venue has yet to be decided. An update will be sent early next year.
Imps Gala
We are hoping to run an Imps gala for our 12 and under swimmers on Saturday evening in early March against four local clubs Dartmouth, Dinnaton, Torquay and Brixham. More details will be sent out in the New Year .
Fees from January 2023.
Swim England and club memberships fees are due to KKSC in January. Our club membership fees will go up by £1 from £20 to £21, but our session fees will remain the same despite Fusion putting our pool charges up for the third time in a year (you are paying the session fees by standing order). The Swim England fees will be £13.95 per swimmer per year for those training and racing within the club only and £35.30 for those swimmers who compete in open competition outside the club.
Further Sessions
If you want to train in more sessions then please let me know – we do have spaces available in both our Tuesday and Friday evening sessions.
25th anniversary
Finally the 25th anniversary of KKSC falls in 2023. We are getting new swim hats printed for sale though the club shop and we are having a new banner made kindly sponsored by Wolferstans Solicitors. We are also planning a big celebration later in 2023!
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Karen Dorey
Head Coach KKSC
