Rykneld Swimming Club is East Midlands Regional Swimming Club of the Year!
I was very proud to be Chairperson of Rykneld Swimming Club yesterday as I attended the Swim England Regional Awards in Loughborough along with Head Coaches Alyssa and Amy, Coaches Lauren and Mia and Committee Member Margaret to share an afternoon celebrating some amazing and inspirational people within the worlds of Swimming, Artistic Swimming, Diving and Water Polo.
Artistic Swimming was Highly Commended in the ‘Artistic Swimming Club of the Year’ Category, with their nomination detailing how our fantastic Synchro section has managed to grow by 25% during the time when we had no home pool, with no gap in training and no swimmers lost to the disruption despite having to travel a distance to training at 3 alternative pools in the area. The section strives hard to be inclusive and a warm and enjoyable place to be, and in the last year are proud of their tally of 21 medals both Regional and National, all of which was detailed in their nomination and was seen as deserving of a special commendation.
Our Artistic Swimming Head Coach Alyssa was also personally Highly Commended in the ‘Age Groups Coach of the Year’ category for her tireless work mentoring a team of 9 coaches, encouraging them to create a warm and welcoming environment for our swimmers, whilst also giving them the freedom to choreograph their own routines and set their own plans for training sessions. She is a real credit to the Club and deserved this personal accolade.
And then after all that we went on to win ‘Swimming Club of the Year’, having received two nominations. An amazing achievement after a year of such adversity to have retained a loyal bunch of swimmers who stayed with us despite having to travel to alternative pools in the area, and then since returning to our new home pool have had a good number of new swimmers join the Club for both our competitive squads and our Learn to Swim Program which have all helped our success this year. Head Coach Amy and Coach Evie were both personally mentioned in the nomination as having worked really hard in this time with never ending support from our amazing parent volunteers.
The club will now progress to the National Awards later on this year to compete for the highly sought after National Club of the Year accolade…watch this space!
A massive thanks goes out to all of those people who give up their time voluntarily to make our Club the success it is - the parents who spend hours at Committee meetings I personally thank you as an awful lot of work goes in behind the scenes to keep the Club running and we couldn’t do it without any of you, and thanks to all our front of house team - the Coaches, poolside helpers, Team Managers, the list goes on and on! And of course to all our brilliant swimmers who are at the centre of everything we do - we send our heartfelt thanks to you all!
Sharon
Chair of Rykneld Swimming Club
