When I returned to poolside in September, I was genuinely excited. I had been away from coaching for nearly two years and, just to make the return slightly more interesting, I was starting at the local ‘rival’ club to the one where I had spent seven years.
Nothing like easing yourself back in gently, is there?
I knew plenty of people around Sussex swimming, of course, but I didn’t really know Hailsham. I was walking into a new club, with new swimmers, new parents, a new coaching team and a new committee. There was a lot to learn and a lot to build.
That is what this season has really been about: building.
Not just building fitness or improving times, but increasing knowledge across the whole club. I want swimmers to understand what they are doing and why they are doing it. I want parents and guardians to understand the journey too, because competitive swimming makes far more sense when everybody knows what we are trying to achieve.
That takes time. One presentation, one training cycle or one good weekend of racing does not suddenly fix everything. But we have started, and I think we have made some very good progress.
The return to K2
Winter Counties was probably the moment when being back properly sank in.
I bumped into so many old faces that I hadn’t seen for a while. Walking onto poolside at K2 in Crawley, I felt a bit like a celebrity. There were so many people who were happy to see me, and I was very pleased to see them too.
Swimming is a small world. You spend years standing beside the same pools, sweating in the same ridiculous heat and sharing the same very long weekends. Then you disappear for a couple of years and realise how many of those people you had actually missed.
It was lovely to be back.
A fairly large bump in the road
The season was not completely straightforward. Our normal pool closed for refurbishment, which could quite easily have caused chaos for a small club.
Losing your home pool is not a minor inconvenience. No pool means no training, and no training means there isn’t much of a swimming club left to coach.
Thankfully, we managed to replace all of our sessions at a pool only a few miles up the road. That was a huge relief and took a lot of work behind the scenes. It was not ideal, but it kept swimmers in the water and kept the season moving.
Our normal pool should be ready for the new season in September and we are excited to get back. It will be better than ever, and after the disruption this year I think we will all appreciate it rather more than we ever did before.
A strong club behind the swimmers
One of my biggest reliefs this season has been discovering that the committee is strong and not political.
That might sound like a strange thing to celebrate unless you have spent much time around swimming clubs. If you have, you will understand EXACTLY why I am mentioning it.
We have a committee that wants the club to succeed, a strong coaching team that wants swimmers to improve and people who are prepared to do the work. That gives us a very solid base for what comes next.
So, what do the numbers say?
Here is the season in statistics:
- Winter Counties: 19 swimmers, 70 events, 3 gold medals, 4 silver medals and 6 bronze medals. We finished 12th out of 15 clubs in the medal table.
- Winter Regionals: 0 qualifiers.
- Winter Nationals: 0 qualifiers.
- Spring Counties: 23 qualifiers, with 17 entering, 120 events. We won 2 silver medals and 7 bronze medals, finishing 14th out of 15 clubs in the medal table.
- Spring Regionals: 8 qualifiers, including 4 with automatic qualifying times who entered. We won 0 medals, with one 4th-place finish.
- Summer Nationals: 0 qualifiers.
- Arena League: 5th out of 10 clubs in Division 2 East.
- Sussex League: We WON Division 2 and earned promotion to Division 1 next season.
There are some things there to be pleased about. Winning Sussex League Division 2 and earning promotion was a great achievement. Eight Spring Regional qualifiers is progress. There were medals, good swims and plenty of PBs along the way.
But the honest commentary on those statistics is very simple:
There is a lot of work to do.
Zero Winter Regional qualifiers and zero National qualifiers tell us where the gap is. Our positions in the County medal tables tell us that too. We should recognise the progress without pretending we are further along than we are. That would help nobody.
What happens next?
The club has remained at the same size, despite the pool problems. We will need to grow next season. I’m excited for next season because I think we have every ability to do so. We have a strong coaching team. We have a strong, sensible committee. We have swimmers who are learning and improving. And, from September, we will have a shiny new pool to work in.
The foundations are there. Now we need more swimmers, more qualifiers, more depth and higher standards across the club. That will not happen by accident, and it will not happen overnight, but we are in a very good position to make it happen.
So I finish my first season back feeling pleased, relieved and excited about what comes next.
But satisfied? Not quite. There is a lot of work to do, and we will do it.
