Saxon Crown Newsletter - Microsoft...away very happy. CANTERBURY ICE BREAKER – JANUARY 2019...

Saxon Crown Newsletter

Saxon Crown Newsletter January 2019

January 2019

Happy New Year to you all, we hope you all had a restful and peaceful holiday.

We had a great first part of the season and look forward to lots more fun and success in

the New Year.

We say welcome to a number of new coaches who have joined us since the start of the

season, including Tia Thornhill, Gabor Szell, Alison Patel, Lucy Nolan, Cecily Ward and

Andreia Souza, and also great to see some of our swimmers stepping up as Assistant

Coaches, including Mateusz Szopinski and Joseph Walters.

We made a small number of changes to the timetable at the turn of the year, having

reviewed the larger timetable re-structuring we undertook at the start of the season, and

hope that it has not inconvenienced anyone too much. We’re now happy with it and don’t

plan any more changes for the rest of the season.

Thanks so much to all of you who contributed to the recent JustGiving fundraising drive.

We raised £1150, some of which has been used to buy new equipment and also pay for

transport to the Arena League. With the beginning of a new year we would also really like

to get a parent fundraising team together so if you have any experience in fundraising or

any ideas that you’d like to put forward please get in touch, either to Neil Amos or Rozanne

Ferrigan … come on, don’t be shy we need your help.

We are always keen as well to get parents trained as officials and team managers for galas

so we can hold our own events and meet our responsibilities as a Club at galas.

We are pleased to announce that Rosalind Huish has agreed to be our new welfare officer.

Rosalind has been a masters swimmer and also has a child swimming at the Club.

Rosalind's details are now on our website, along with information about the role –

http://www.saxoncrown.org.uk/page/welfare-and-safety/15601

http://www.saxoncrown.org.uk/page/welfare-and-safety/15601



If you need to contact her, please email her at [email protected] or 07786

431051.

The welfare role is a volunteer role and one of the most important in the Club. We are all

very grateful for Rosalind to be taking this on. Please give her all your support and co-

operation.

And a big thank you to Marion Levine who has been performing the role for the last 2.5

years. We are all grateful for the time and commitment she has given.



GALA NEWS

We’ve had a busy three months leading up to Christmas with competition galas, team

galas and final rounds of leagues.

After all the excitement of a power cut at the Glassmill which meant Round 1 had to be

cancelled our Kent Junior League team had to wait till September and November before

they could head off all over Kent for

another lively two rounds

of swimming.

Unfortunately, even after

our brave and heroic

swimmers did their

absolute best, we were

beaten by Greenwich by

1 point and have been

relegated down a

League – we’ll be back

next year bigger and

better!!



October, November and December saw our Arena League team heading off all over the

South East finding themselves up against some very strong competition. The Club

bounced back in Round 3 pulling out some amazing performances and fantastic team

spirit with us finishing above local rivals Greenwich Royals and staying in London

Division 1 for another year.

We now even have our own club chant, led ably by our Junior Captain Luke!!!

KENT DEVELOPMENT MEET – OCTOBER

This meet was held at the Medway Park, Gillingham over two days and loads of our

swimmers obtained PBs and had some great swims. Congratulations to everyone who

took part.

Congratulations to Timmy Adelowo for swimming his way onto the Kent Development

Camp based on his results at this meet.

LONDON WINTER REGIONALS – NOVEMBER

Luke, Katie, Mateusz, Owen, Renee, Kai travelled to the Aquatic Centre in Stratford to

compete in the London Winter Regionals. Congratulations to Mateusz for winning a silver

medal in the 200m butterfly.

BECKENHAM RISING STARS – NOVEMBER

Lots of our younger swimmers attended this gala and had a really good days swimming.

They really enjoyed themselves getting their swimming careers off the ground and have

now caught the competing bug!

BLACK LION WINTER OPEN – NOVEMBER

A massive Saxon Crown contingent headed down to Medway Park, Gillingham for a very

successful gala for our swimmers. A great weekend’s swimming was had by all!!



BASILDON LAST CHANCE QUALIFIER – DECEMBER

On this very cold weekend Squads A, B+ and B headed to Basildon to give themselves the

chance to achieve their Kent Qualifying times, thankfully they were successful and came

away very happy.

CANTERBURY ICE BREAKER – JANUARY 2019

Blowing off the Christmas cobwebs we saw a huge number of our swimmers racing for

the last time before their Kent County Championship entry forms had to be in and for lots

of our swimmers it was a great weekend.

KENT CHAMPIONSHIPS 2019

A massive congratulations to each and every one of our swimmers who had their races

accepted this year. This year has broken new records yet again for the number of

swimmers entering. The freestyle events, in particular, were heavily oversubscribed,

74% over on 50m freestyle for girls and 52% on the boys 50m freestyle so to have been

accepted is a great achievement and you should be very proud of yourselves.

In our first weekend of racing we got seven medals, which is a great start and puts us ninth

in the points table – let’s keep it up!

If your swimmer has qualified, please don't waste the space, lots of other swimmers

have been disappointed.

Please note that the warm-up times at Crystal Palace have been bought forward an

hour, which will make a difference to all. Please check the website

https://www.kentswimming.org/spage-swimming-championships_2019.html

where you will find the updated Session Timing Guide for your information.

https://www.kentswimming.org/spage-swimming-championships_2019.html



UPCOMING GALAS

January

Kent County Champs 19th &

20th – London Aquatic

Centre, Stratford

Kent County Champs – 26th

& 27th – Crystal Palace

February

Kent County Champs – 2nd

& 3rd and 9th & 10th –

Crystal Palace

March

Erith Spring Meet – 2nd &

3rd March – Crook Log,

Bexley (Marlins to

Performance B Squads)

Team Luton March Open

Meet – 30th & 31st – Luton

(Top Club, A & B+ Squads)

April

Crawley Long Course Open

Meet – 5th, 6th & 7th –

Crawley (Top Club, A & B+

Squads)

TBC – Black Lion Regional

Chaser – 6th & 7th – Medway

Park, Gillingham (Marlins

to Performance B Squads)

Please note our attendance at the April Black Lion Gala is only provisional at this stage.



MASTERS

At the beginning of September six Saxon masters made their way to Slovenia for the LEN

European Masters Championships. The week started strongly with Lauren winning two

gold medals in the 200m Freestyle and the 800m freestyle on the first two days. Bex came

within a whisker of adding to the medal tally, missing

out on bronze in the 100 free by 0.15 seconds and in the

50 free by 0.24 seconds. Throughout the event the six

swimmers amassed 10 swimming certificates for top 8

finishes. After the pool events were over Bex and Ruth

took part in the Open Water 5km race in the beautiful

lake Bled. Both swam amazingly against a tough field to

finish 13th and 15th respectively. Out of the water there

was plenty of time to explore the Julian Alps and the

Adriatic coast – all in all a pretty amazing experience!



On 25th November the Saxon Masters took on the Swim England T30 Challenge.

Swimmers competed against the clock to see how far they could swim in 30 minutes. This

is the first time Saxon has taken part in this event. Eighteen swimmers managed to swim

an impressive 28km between them. Everyone managed to smash their personal targets

and final distances were entered into the Swim England competition and seven

competitors achieved top five finishes in their age groups. This was followed by a well-

deserved Christmas lunch in Deptford! Well done to everyone who took part and a

massive thank you to Colin for keeping time and motivating everyone on the day as well

as deciding the Saxon prize winners!

In August we held a joint warm weather training camp with Greenwich Masters. Over

four days swimmers completed six two-hour training sessions in the outdoor pool at

Calella near Barcelona, alongside some inventive land training from the Greenwich coach.

There was also plenty of time to get some additional swimming in the Mediterranean Sea.

Many thanks to Jenny for organising the trip!



Also in the summer, four Saxon masters took part in the 10km dock2dock swim at Royal

Victoria docks. Bex and Mark completed the

5km swim and Ruth and Tristram the very

impressive 10km distance. All finished with

great times despite the windy and wavy

conditions.

In October Lauren and Kat headed to the

Swim England Masters Championships in Sheffield. In a packed programme, and with 11

events between them, they managed a great set of personal bests. Lauren took first place

in both the 200 free and the 200 backstroke.

A brave contingent of Saxon Masters took on the Brockwell cold water swimming gala at

Brockwell lido in November. Working with

Greenwich Royals as the GROSAX team, they

faced water temperatures of 10 degrees (a little

colder than Barcelona!) and raced across a range

of events including a 400m cold water endurance

race and the hotly contested novelty hat race.

Overall a respectable second place to

Parliament Hill lido and a very welcome sauna

afterwards!



HEAD COACH’S REPORT

PROGRESSION

Having made a number of changes over the summer we expected to have a teething period

where swimmers, coaches and all involved with the club took a little time to adapt to the

changes. Fortunately, this did not take any time at all and, apart from a couple of issues

in the first week, everyone settled into our new routine extremely well. The changes have

led to great improvements across all squads across the club, more people wanting to

compete and generally a much more positive atmosphere within the club. We have still

got plenty of things to improve but we are going in the right direction as a club and will

continue to gain more and more success in the remainder of the season.

We had amazing success at the meets we attended which has led to 21 Saxon Swimmers

being accepted into the Kent County Championships which started on the 19th January.

A personal highlight of mine had to be the final round of the Arena League at which our

swimmers were fantastic! The support they gave each other was amazing and something

I had not seen in the club until that point and hopefully that will continue into all our

meets moving forward.

ON TRACK

As I have previously mentioned, this year would always be a year which would involve us

restructuring the club to give swimmers the best possible chance of improving, no matter

what the end goal for the individual is.

I have been so impressed with how quickly swimmers in the club are improving, some of

the results I have seen so far outweighed my expectations at this stage of the season but

the biggest thing I have seen is a huge improvement in the atmosphere around the club.

When I first came to the club the atmosphere was flat and didn’t have much of a club feel.

It is totally different now, swimmers and coaches seem to be enjoying what they are doing

and the feeling around the club is great.



Having been part of successful teams myself the biggest thing that gets any swimmer

through the difficult moments throughout a season is having a great network of friends

and support in a club. I can feel the club getting to that point which I believe will give us

the chance to create an even more successful environment for every swimmer at the club.

Keep working hard and let’s see what we can achieve over the next few months of the

season.

Go Saxon!!



VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

Saxon Crown has now over 500 swimmers and as we grow as a club there becomes an

ever increasing need for more parents to volunteer to help make things run smoothly.

This is especially so when the club is hosting galas such as the Future Champs and Club

Champs, if anyone is interested in becoming a volunteer please email Neil at

[email protected].

RAISING A CONCERNS

We have established routes for raising a concern, which we recognise may happen from

time to time. In the first instance please arrange a time to talk to coaches, or contact the

welfare officer if you'd prefer. Details on how to do this are on our website - under Club

Information. Please do not come on poolside uninvited to talk to a coach, or to interrupt

them if they are meeting someone else. They need to supervise swimmers and not be

distracted.

SUPPORTING YOUR SWIMMER

It is great to be enthusiastic about your swimmers' achievements but please don't put

them under pressure to perform. There is a great video on YouTube about this, which is

worth everyone watching, called "It's our game not yours"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8R50LdkTVc

PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography is not permitted in any of our training sessions unless agreed in advance

with the Club and the Leisure Centre.

FEEDBACK

We encourage our coaches to give feedback first and foremost direct to the swimmers

rather than parents, and, to keep fees down, we do not provide written reports on

progress. Please contact the coach concerned if you wish to discuss a swimmer's

progression but ideally this is always done with the swimmer present as they are the ones

who need to learn how to swim better, not us parents!

Many thanks in your co-operation in making Saxon Crown a friendly and supportive

amateur sports club.

mailto:[email protected]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8R50LdkTVc



SAXON CROWN CLUB KIT

The Club kit plays an important role in making the Saxon Crown members feel part of

the club, it also projects a united image at the competitions we attend.

Club kit will play a significant role in Welfare / Child Protection e.g. making it easier

for swimmers and officials to be located quickly on a busy poolside.

Our kit will provide a consistent identity through the use of the same design, colours

and typeface across the different products.

The kit supplier is Sports Scene Direct based in Welling (95 Bellegrove Rd, Welling

DA16 3PG). They are more than happy for you to pop along so you can try the kit on

before you buy it to ensure you get the right size as personalized items cannot be

refunded

The kit can be easily ordered online at

http://www.macronlondonsoutheast.com/saxon-crown-190-c.asp

THE T-SHIRT IS COMPULSORY AT ALL GALAS. WE ALSO STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU PURCHASE THE OTHER PRODUCTS AS IT PROJECTS A POSITIVE IMAGE OF THE CLUB.

http://www.macronlondonsoutheast.com/saxon-crown-190-c.asp

Saxon Crown Newsletter - Microsoft...away very happy. CANTERBURY ICE BREAKER – JANUARY 2019...

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