Information on our Club.

Please click on the links below to view these important documents.

MISSION STATEMENT & CLUB AIMS

CLUB MISSION STATEMENT.

Our mission is to offer children in the Ashford and surrounding area the best opportunity to learn to swim and develop and achieve their potential in the sport of swimming.

CLUB AIMS.

The club has three main aims:

1. To teach water safety
2. To teach swimming
3. To compete at the highest levels.

1. To give water confidence to non-swimmers in a very safe environment (this is normally carried out in the learner pool). To enjoy being in water without fear, but still being aware of the dangers it can present. The first stage includes such things as being shown how the enter water safely. To be able to regain their feet, form the prone and back floating positions and be able to open their eyes under water without goggles, so as to cope with an emergency, outside the pool, or teaching environment. The introduction of all four recognized strokes, concentrating on Front crawl Back stroke and Breaststroke. Play is important at this stage of the swimmers development.
2. The second stage takes place in the main pool. There are four progressive teaching station. Here we continue to teach strokes that comply with the laws of the sport, teach the shallow competitive dive and the many water skills advocated by the A.S.A. Award Scheme parts 1 - 4. Including distance badges. One of the main differences at each stage is the increased amount of work required. Increasing the swimmers stamina, allows them to concentrate on the detailed requirements of the stroke need. Within each group the work is designed to improve both the skills and fitness of the individual. When stamina work is done the stroke is expected to break down but the fitness gained allows for stroke improvement to follow. Once children have completed the fourth width group, they are considered to be competent swimmers. From here they are usually invited to progress to length swimming, this is the beginning of the competitive section of the club. Here swimmers work to achieve the standard required to make the Main squad. Movement of swimmers throughout the club is done on ability, swimmers are assessed be each teacher on a range of skills being taught. Because of the competitive requirement in the squad, there is also the need to move swimmers up based on age, linked to ability. This is carried out by the coaches and width group teacher.
3. The squad trains in two groups. Squad members can train up to five sessions a week, reaching National standard. Other club activities are friendly inter-club galas, North Kent Junior League, East Invicta's, Speedo League and others. Swimmers are also encouraged to go to Open Meets. In keeping with the Clubs main aims, to teach swimming in the best manner and to be competitive, all swimming groups are required to swim a minimum of twice a week under normal circumstances. This is because it takes at least four times longer to teach a child to swim taking lessons once a week than it does twice a week. Skills are forgotten, programmes are progressive and prepared for the majority of the swimmers who swim twice a week, therefore large sections of training are missed by those attending only once a week. A second point is that pool time is paid for by the hour, therefore prices have to be at a level to cover these costs, this means that the unoccupied space has to be met by all swimmers, thus keeping the price artificially high. For competitive swimmers fitness and stamina are of prime importance and this requires as much water time as possible.