LEANDER JUNIOR OPEN MEET

SUNDAY 18 JANUARY - AT BEECHDALE POOL

Another successful meet for Bramcote; lots of swimmers taking part, shedloads of PB's and quite a few swimmers making the finals and picking up trophies. Best performers were Tom Lyons (1st in 50 Back, 2nd in 50 Free) and Sharntay Saunders (2nd in 50 Fly and 50 Back).

Full details of all swims can be found on the website database.

David James

Update on swimming leagues

The Club has entered the following leagues for 2009:

1. Sports Centre League
2. Minor Gala League (Spring)
3. Leicester & District Diddy League
4. Development League
5. Minor Gala League (Autumn)
6. National Swimming League
7. Notts and District League

There's full details on all these leagues and other competitive events the Club is participating in this year at swim-to-win.com/leagues

MINOR LEAGUE (SPRING) RESULTS - ROUND 1 of 3

This was held at Bramcote on Sat Jan 17th

A great 1st place for us; and with a 20 point margin!

Full details on the results page, and all times recorded in the database.

David James

Competitive Coaching Philosophy

I believe a coach is someone who facilitates the achievement of others through a sacrifice of their own. The role should be carried out by someone who is honest, true and believes in the pursuit of achieving goals which may, on the outset seem hard or even impossible to achieve. Within the sport
of swimming, a coach must dedicate time to not only work with swimmers on a daily basis, but also commit to continually educating themselves with up to date ideas and knowledge.


As a school teacher in my full time career, I believe I bring a unique perspective to the role of a coach which is done in my spare time. By bringing the professional values of Teaching, along with understanding the trials and tribulations young people go through in their daily lives, I am able to engage, motivate and most importantly empathise with young people, and in turn guide them into wanting to achieve great things within the sport.

The programme we run and wish to continue to develop at Bramcote is the perfect stepping stone to County Squad swimming. But, it is also structured to compliment County level swimming in order to provide a continued home-base for our County swimmers, and potentially get non-County swimmers to Midland-time performance levels. This puts us in a very strong position in relation to other clubs across Nottinghamshire.

I believe in a large focus on team work and creating a supportive atmosphere both in training and at competition. Swimmers aspire to compete at Regional and National levels on an individual basis, yet understand the importance of competing for Bramcote swimming club, and the pride they have in doing this.

We are part of a team, and I distil a philosophy that as a team we achieve more than on our own.

Tom Wilkinson
Head Coach

SPORTS CENTRE LEAGUE RESULTS - JAN 10th

'A' team (Div 1) at Mansfield;   'B' team (Div 3) at Sutton - results now available

Both sets of results are now available for viewing on the results page, and all times have been entered on the website database.

Any errors, please let me know at davejames234@hotmail.com

David James

Annual report by Andy Thornton, Chair of the Club

 

After having served on the Executive Committee for a number of years, including a period as Vice-chairman I now get the opportunity to give the Chairman’s report for the year 2007-2008.

People usually do their “thank you’s” at the end. Well I need to start with mine. I need to record a huge thank you to my Vice-chairman, Dean Cooper. Every club needs someone who just gets on with things and gets them done. I suspect that most people don’t really know how much Dean does and how much workload gets dumped on him. We owe him a lot.

I’d like to thank –

Each one of our Committee members who play such a key part in supporting the club and driving us forward. Jackie is standing down as our Secretary and I would like to extend a special thank you to her for everything she has done. We need to encourage someone to fill this vital position.

All those people who provide help and support who do not sit on the Committee, including all the parents who have helped at gala’s and events in all sorts of capacities throughout the year – we need you to continue to help and get more involved if you can. We can help you help us, if you come forward.

It is a tremendous help when people can take tasks on and enable the workload to be shared around. And there are some individuals who have taken on significant amounts of work for us. For example – Mike Weaver who administers our database so effectively, Karen Thornton who operates as our gala co-ordinator and organiser, David James who has taken on managing event results and times, Dave Tissington who has provided a great deal of time, help and materials in support of the Bramcote Open Meet.


Having mentioned the Open Meet – a massive debt of gratitude is owed by the whole club to Karen Oates. She has shown real determination in getting Bramcote back on the map with our own Open Event. This has taken an immense amount of time and commitment from Karen but has also been supported by many other people. Karen, Dean and myself are proud of what the club achieved and this was the case because of the large number of people who stepped forward to take on tasks large and small that added-up to a major success. Thank you to all those involved. We hope you enjoyed it, as we intend to establish our Open in the swimming calendar going forward, and we will need help in the future.

Last but not least in the “thank you’s” section comes the Coaching Team. We’d be nowhere without the team that has been built up over past and recent years. We have successfully been able to blend continuity with some fresh blood. We are beginning to get recognition for the strength of the team we have built up.

It is a major landmark year for the Club with Dianne stepping down as Head Coach, and taking up the position of Head of Development. In recognition of her long and outstanding service the Club have nominated her for Broxtowe Sports Coach of the year award – and she has been our coach of the year for a lot longer than that. The whole Club owes her a great debt of gratitude for all the time, effort and achievements over the past 22 years.

I am extremely pleased to include the statement that Tom Wilkinson will be taking up the position of Head Coach for the Club and leading the team going forward. This is a testament to the development that Tom has achieved over the last year.

It is always possible to improve and we should never sit back and think we’ve finished. We have to run (or rather swim) to stand-still, we have to accelerate and drive continuous improvement. But I do believe this has been a good year for the Club, we have made positive strides (or strokes) forward and I feel that we have created the platform for more good things to happen next year and beyond.

I’d like to highlight a few key points –

Once again we have had a solid financial performance which has continued the turn around from a few years back. We have made a number of investments in the Club through the year and these will be continued into 2009. Through investment, we now have more highly trained and qualified teachers and coaches than most Clubs in Notts. But we could always do with more volunteers.

David Patrick has continued to do great things with our web site; it is one of the best around. He and his team have made strides to re-establish the social side of the Club’s operation. The family barbecue was a real success. Hopefully more to come next year.

Paul Martin and Julie Graham have been instrumental in driving us towards Swim 21 accreditation. We are now in position to drive at achieving our assessment early in 2009.

We have the Swim Camp trip to Germany being planned for next summer. Yet another major undertaking for the club and another set of helpers.

Whatever the outcome of the final round we will finish in our highest ever position in the National League (previously the Speedo League). We secured our place in the Sports Centre League Division 1 for next season and got closer to teams like Mansfield and Sherwood than ever before in recent years. I will not steal anything more from the Coaching Report.

Finally, back to the Open Meet – we learned a lot of things and we can always improve but we have already received extremely positive feedback from coaches and parents attending the event. We learned a lot about what we can achieve as a Club.

Just as a reminder - when I stood for election at last year’s AGM I made the point that I was prepared to take on the role of Chairman providing people understood that my work commitments would mean that I would not be able to dedicate the time and effort that I personally, and others, feel is required of the role.

I will be very happy to stand for election once again, under the same conditions.

Andy Thornton

Chairman, Bramcote Swimming Club
1st December, 2008

Bramcote gets new online forum for swimmers and parents

The new forum is now live and is aimed at helping engage swimmers and parents with what's going on within Club.

It's  there to answer questions about squad times, forthcoming gala's and new events and should help to improve communication between swimmers, coaches, parents and the governing committee. 

Register now and use it to ask questions, make comments and give feedback.

David Patrick
Communications & Marketing
Bramcote Swimming Club
www.swim-to-win.com/forum

Advice on nutrition from the ASA

 

The full document is available on the swim-to-win links page

Minor Gala League Round 1 - Revised team list

Next meeting of the swimming club committee is on on 7th Jan at Beeston Town Hall - 7:15pm.

National Swimming League - final positions

National Swimming League – results and final league table

On a grim and grizzly December night Bramcote sent two teams to opposite ends of the region.

The result at Peterborough meant that Bramcote finished 6th in Div 2 of the East Midlands National League. A fantastic achievement, well done!

Swimmers selected for the Notts & District Final at Retford reproduced that familiar team spirit. Bramcote finished 2nd on the night and 7th in the league (results and final league table will be posted soon). For some swimmers it was their first gala so a special thank you to the parents and senior swimmers who helped and encouraged our younger swimmers.

Happy New Year to all. I hope you haven’t eaten too many mince pies, the 2009 season starts on 10th January!