With the exception of club training (exlcuding land) all events are cancelled. E.g.
County, Region and even the British Champs.
Even Euro 2020 has been postphoned. I understand that the chlorinated water will not allow for any viruses to infect swimmers; its seems a safe activity.
It all depends whether Better keeps pools open how swimming can progress.
Madison is to re-join Hackney Aquatics as a swimmer in a squad. How could anybody resist joining Hackney Aquatics because they did exceptionally well at this year’s County Champs and reached 5th. place for the team. 4 gold, 8 silver, 8 bronze medals. Not bad indeed considering that the club is very young indeed.
After 1 1/2 years of break from training, Madison will slowly ease herself into training again. By September her break will have been 2 years.
I suppose it takes longer to mend the Os Acromiale in a younger person.
Great news.
I wholeheartedly apologise to all parents whom I criticized in the past for not becoming swimming officials.
It sounds stupendous but that is what I literally did. I told people off for not officiating when the pressure of cancelled meets brought me to have a go at parents.
Yet over the years, I had the privilege to speak to many parents who told me their reasons for not being an official. Some are emotional and others are unspecified.
If you compare sports, swimming has the highest requirement of officials, as each lane requires individual attention. Depending on the level, where level one and two are the highest possible, competitions can require a minimum of 22 qualified and licensed officials.
Yet all those officials are volunteers within a framework that is more or less regulated.
Whilst qualifying standards for officials are high and follow strict FINA guide lines the way that training is run depends on the volunteers in local clubs and associations.
It is extremely time-consuming but a mere by-product of having a swimmer in the club.
Yet when being an official one has to deal with other officials and those who teach us and those who are in charge of clubs and associations.
I think it must be up to each individual how comfortable they are in helping how they decide their activities within clubs or the sport as a whole.
Often clubs vary tremendously because of their location, demographic make-up and personal motivations. It all depends how well one gets on, how good one feels about doing the job and how fair we think it all is.
If competitions have to be cancelled for lack of officials then it is up to the sport’s governing bodies to find out why there is such a lack. It starts within the clubs and goes right through to local county associations, Swim England, Scotland, Wales and British Swimming.
There is little regulation apart from the yearly handbook and FINA rules. Many clubs have variations in their club constitutions and rules are hardly enforced *. There is no quality control compatible to Ofsted for schools.
So it is literally up to the people who make up the clubs, how they perceive what is good to do.
Officiating is always completely voluntary. There is no reward other than knowing that one has contributed to a positive environment with positive contributions.
Whatever happens in between is a matter for the people who are involved and that is all confidential and it depends how well people can work out their log jams how good the sport can progress.
* Of course the swimming rules are enforced if an official can spot an infraction and the referee accepts it. But rules how clubs are run or associations of officials are run are in my view quite fragmented.
Just gotten this incredibly sad email stating that the Middlesex County Spring Development meet, planned for Sunday 24 March 2019 is cancelled, due to lack of officials.
This is sadly just one of many recent cancellations of swimming meets in the London area, due to lack of officials.
It is a simple process,
The whole system is based on a completely voluntary participation.
During my officiating duties I found the time to speak to other officials how they ‘groom’ parents into officialdom and in some clubs there is an obvious awareness of duty among parents whilst in others parents just think that somebody else will be doing it, that it is enough to raise money for the club to be a good member.
Well, now when push comes to shove, parents are starting to realise that their kids simply cannot win the medals they so treasure unless they also become officials and helpers to keep the competitions fair for all.
Parents and coaches realise that there is only a point to training their kids to become performance swimmers if the competitions actually can go ahead.
What is the most worrying about the situation is that the sport will suffer if competitions have to keep getting cancelled.
I think perhaps parents rather sit on the gallery and talk to each other or watch their swimmers but that will simply have to change.
Parents have to also become officials when their children enter the performance swimming world. Every parent who can bring a child to a competition can help at that competition. Any special needs of parents can be accommodated most of the time.
Parents simply have to sign up to an official’s course, which is run by every county and then get a training log. Please ask your club for details how to get into a course.
Still going to training regularly with the performance squad but haven’t been competing since the end of last season, e.g. August 2018.
Have already obtained 8 County times for this season during last season.
Don’t be put off by injury. Even though swimming is a very active sport with constant competitions, having an injury is no reason at all to drop out of the sport.
You can continue training and keep fit, even if you can’t enter every competition for a while.
Don’t let your coach tell you otherwise because if you love swimming you will want to stick with it.
Just thought, that swimming is the ideal sport for hyper active kids. Stick anybody into a swimming club and even the most lively kid will be tired by the end of the day, with little time left for being hyper-active.
Think about it if your child attends morning training before school, by the time they get into the benches, they will already have spent all excess energy during the AM session and if they get active again the after-school training session will take care of that.
Doctors should prescribe more sport less pills.
I think the key is to get parents involved as much as the children to develop the healthy life-style for the whole family.
Spriiint 