South Axholme
Sharks Committee Meeting Present: Jeff Buxton, Jill Watson, Bev Webb, Claire Windle, Margaret Gray, Sandra Temperton, Tony Lockey, Mo Leggott, Stewart Watson & Robin Halls. Apologies: Simon Latham, Jim Cook, David Gray & Jan Simm. Minutes of Last Meeting It was politely pointed out that our Treasurers first name is spelt as Stewart rather than Stuart, apologies to him for this. Also, in January’s Treasurer’s report the invoice for Running Imp should have been noted as £12.26 rather then £7.50 as stated. Matters Arising None. Correspondence We have received an invite to a meeting on the 29th of January 2008 to be held at Adwick Leisure Centre for 7.30pm. Fiorna Cairns Smith, the North East Region Education Officer, is travelling from Newcastle to address us on the current ASA policy on educational matters and the feasibility & practicability of organising ASA courses in Doncaster. All Clubs should try and send one or two representatives to this meeting if possible. A Swim North East Handbook has been received and given to Jeff. We have also been advised of a Workshop open to all Club representatives entitled ‘How to get tax breaks for your Club’. This workshop will help Clubs achieve Community Amateur Sports Club Status and thereby allow Clubs to take advantage of new tax breaks. Date of meeting- Wednesday the 19th of March 2008 at 6pm at Rossington Miners Welfare Learn Direct Centre. We didn’t feel that this workshop would benefit us at the moment. Coach’s Report Galas The first event of the year, Sprint Night and the First Handicap Race, was held on Saturday 19th January at Epworth Pool. The event was well attended with more than 70 swimmers taking part. Thank you to all who came to help – the evening progressed smoothly although took longer than anticipated! There were some excellent swims by many swimmers and it was good to see some new younger swimmers taking part. The winners of the Handicap were: GIRLS – SAMANTHA KELLY BOYS – ROSS EDGAR Well done to both of them! I am keen to hold another Sprint Night at Epworth in the future. Obviously, I need to avoid June and November due to the Club Championships, so I guess we have a choice of March/April or September. My thoughts are to do the ‘sprints’ the same as this time and then instead of the Handicap Race (I think the next time we do that should be January 2009, so it becomes an annual event), we hold a ‘Skins’ event. I haven’t worked out the full detail yet – I’ll probably organise one skin per squad to ensure a range of swimmers can participate and have a chance of winning. Our 1st Barnsley League Gala is to be held on Saturday the 26th of January at Adwick. The team is almost confirmed – just a couple more to chase up and we are some key swimmers missing due to a clash with a DARTES Gala and several of our swimmers are going skiing with South Axholme School. However, I am still confident of a good performance. We have a busy weekend on the 9th/10th February, many of our age group swimmers are at Scarborough on Saturday the 9th of February for the Zone events, then we have several of our Masters swimmers competing in the Rotherham Metro Open at Ponds Forge on Sunday 10th February. The following weekend sees the first of the John Harriman Championships. We have entered both the 9 year old girl and the 9 year old boy relay teams – I’ll be putting up a list of the selected children later this week when I’ve had chance to look at the times from Saturday. Lifesaving and Personal Survival These sessions began on the15th of January 2008 and so far are going well. Pat Remmington, who has been involved in lifesaving in Doncaster for many years, is attending initially to help us get started. Jackie and Simon are hoping to qualify as Examiners as soon as possible. We will take a group of the older swimmers through Bronze Medallion fairly quickly then the Assistant Teachers award, which will enable them to teach the younger children. At the same time another group of younger children/less able swimmers will learn skills at a more leisurely pace. Finally the Personal Survival Group will work through various awards, learning skills as they go. DMASA Meeting Simon and I attended the DMASA meeting on the 8th of January 2008. The main topic was the distances that should be swum at the Doncaster Met Championships. At the AGM it was voted that the distance be reduced from 100m to 50m. There was concern that Nigel Hunston (Armthorpe ASC) voted for this against the wishes of Armthorpe Club and as a result he resigned as Chair of DMASA. However, he was asked to reconsider and has now agreed to remain as Chair until this topic is resolved. Mick Garside, who also resigned at the AGM, has also agreed to remain on the Committee. George Stillings proposed that all DMASA members should go back to their own Clubs and discuss what they believe is the right thing for swimming. Each Club needs to present this as a resolution. My thoughts, although I would like to discuss this now, is that we should propose a Swimming Development Plan, which includes events for all types of swimmers from sprinters to long distance swimmers. I also believe DMASA should cover all the teaching elements of swimming again. There is a meeting on the 29th of January, where the North Eastern Swimming Development Officer, will come and explain what the ASA position is on the teaching of swimming and all the information about how to get qualified to teach swimming, what it costs and what funding is available from the ASA. I would like at least 4 members of the Club to attend this meeting on 29th January. SA Sharks Sub-Committee This meeting was held on the 15th of January 2008. Simon Latham, Tony Lockey and I met (apologies from David Gray and Bev Webb). We still have insufficient information to make a decision as to the benefits of pursuing this line. We agreed to write to the Pool Committee and request a meeting to discuss this further, so we understand their objectives and concerns. Bev write to Rob re this. Transition from Teaching to Sharks I am concerned about the number and quality of children coming into Sharks. I would like to include this in the meeting with the Pool Committee, as above, so we can look in more detail at teaching practices and how children are encouraged to join Sharks. We are still short of young swimmers so we should also look at other ways to encourage children to join – perhaps through school swimming or by advertising a ‘Sharks Trial?’ Eddy used to act as an ‘ go between’ to monitor standards of the children joining Sharks. Perhaps some moving of times may help to reinstate this? Linked to this, I would like to review the times that all the squads train. I want to introduce a 2 hour session (probably on a Thursday evening) for some of the Killer Squad. We also need to discuss the Monday Masters session. I would like to see it continue but believe all the swimmers who attend should pay for it as a regular session rather than on the door so it is cost effective. Petition Reports of a petition have come to my attention. This has reputedly been organised by one or two older swimmers and states that they do not wish DARTES swimmers to swim for Sharks. I am concerned that if this is the case then some of the younger swimmers may have felt pressured to sign it. I passionately believe DARTES swimmers should swim for Sharks and I am delighted that they all do swim for us, whenever asked, providing galas do not clash. We need to be proud of our DARTES swimmers. Younger Sharks swimmers should aspire to becoming DARTES swimmers but it needs to be as well as Sharks not instead of. One suggestion I have for the DMASA Development proposal is for DARTES swimmers to return to their own Clubs one night a week (possibly Friday evenings as most feeder Clubs have Friday sessions). This would help them keep strong relationships with the other swimmers. It would also be good for DARTES, as they would save on water and coaching time on Friday evenings but also the swimmers would encourage new DARTES members to join by being more visible. To move on from this petition, I suggest that myself and Simon have a meeting with all of the eight recently chosen Captains and Vice Captains. Hopefully all can be resolved and we can make the point that if they have concerns or questions about how the Club is being run that they can approach either of us or indeed any Committee member for answers, rather than by encouraging young children to sign papers that they may not understand. The points raised by Jeff were then discussed in more detail as follows: The Committee agreed with Jeff’s proposals regarding the distances that should be swam at the Doncaster Mets Championships i.e. that all types of swimmers should be considered therefore the Mets should include distances ranging from 50m sprints to the longer distance swims of 200m+, which should encourage more swimmers to take part. This may mean more Galas but it was felt that swimming in Doncaster would benefit from this. The Committee also felt that it would be beneficial for the DMASA to take over the swimming development in Doncaster. The DMASA need four Secretaries from four separate feeder Clubs to agree to a change in their constitution. The Committee agreed that the level and number of new swimmers coming into Sharks was low and these were not the usual standard; it was felt that these new swimmers may not be ready for the jump from teaching to Sharks and if this were the case the retention levels would be low. Eddie is no longer teaching at Epworth Pool and he was the link for us from teaching to Sharks; he was a good judge of which swimmers were ready to go to Sharks and when and would encourage them to keep up with their swimming by joining Sharks. We need a smoother transition to be incorporated in the period between lessons and Sharks, as at the moment the step is too great from lessons to Sharks. We could possibly look at the advanced level lesson swimmers, when they are ready, being encouraged to join a new Sharks squad, whereby they will swim lengths rather than widths and the technique training will continue at the same time. This would then give these swimmers the confidence and stamina to join the Reef squad when ready. We could possibly accommodate this by splitting the Reef squad into 2 half hour sessions. With this in mind we may have to look at rearranging the squad times and actual squad status. We obviously need to discuss this with the Pool management and Committee and at the same time we should look at other activities that could be offered by the Pool, like the Life Saving option that is already a success. It was therefore agreed that we should discuss some ideas with the Pool management as to how we can now improve on this situation. Perhaps we could discuss this at the Meeting to be arranged shortly between our Sub-Committee and the Epworth Pool Committee? We also discussed briefly how we could try and increase the numbers coming into Sharks and it was agreed that we should try and advertise ourselves more in the local community, especially as we are now running the Life Guarding and Life Saving sessions on Tuesday nights at the Pool, which we think gives us the perfect opportunity to promote Sharks and Epworth Pool as a whole. With regard to the Monday evening Masters session between 9pm and 10pm; Rob has advised that this pooltime is not cost effective at the moment, as most Masters swimmers pay on the night as and when they swim. In order that we are able to keep this session open to the Masters we must insist that they pay monthly/quarterly, as they do for the Friday night session otherwise Rob will withdraw this pooltime. Bev to write to all Masters re this and request that they begin to pay monthly/quarterly for this session. It was suggested that we should look at possibly of re-structuring the payments made by Masters swimmers, in that we may be able to move towards these particular payments being more of a ‘membership fee’ and in this way we may be able to claim these fees as gift aid payments. The gift aid element of these payments can also be backdated to when the Pool achieved Charitable status in June 2007. We can also claim gift aid on any donations made to the Club. The Committee felt that the recent Sprint night had been a success and we have had lots of positive feedback from parents and children alike. The only downside was the fact that the swimmers didn’t have the opportunity to support their fellow swimmers because of the lack of space on poolside at Epworth. The Handicap race was a resounding success and it was agreed that we should run this as an annual event, perhaps on its own and run semi-finals and finals and incorporate other strokes as well. Jeff has suggested previously that he would like to run a 2 hour training session every week; some of the older swimmers do a 2 hour training programme now, swam over two sessions. Jeff felt that the A grade swimmers would benefit from this but it was pointed out that this extended session may cause a problem with the children who have homework on a regular basis. It was pointed out that when we hire a lifeguard for our own Galas or Sprint nights at Epworth, should the Club be paying this or does the Pool Management take care of the payment as part of the Pool hire and staffing cost? Sandra would look into this, as she didn’t think that Sara Temperton had been paid as a lifeguard at our sprint night yet. Forthcoming Galas See Coach’s report for details or the Sharks notice board and website. Any Other Business We have now got the Swim 21 folder back and there is a lot of follow up work to be done re this, in which we particularly need volunteers to help, which needs to include parents etc who are not Committee members. There is quite a long list of ‘jobs’, some of which can be grouped together and can be undertaken by one person however, we really need to assign some of these jobs to other parents/carers, we should therefore try and circulate a list amongst parents to see if we can get volunteers this way. The Summer Fun Day, scheduled for the 19th of July, clashes with the Concert in the Park at Belton however, the Committee thought that we should still organise the event for this day. Mo has looked at various venues in and around the Isle, including Crowle Football Field and Pavillion - cost £10 per hour and West Butterwick Village Hall - cost £60 available from 1pm onwards on that date. The Crowle Pavillion price may be negotiable at a fixed price; Bev to speak to Mike Johnson (Chairman) re this. Mo to look at other possible venues. The Code of Conduct has now been removed from our notice board and Bev is retyping this to include the necessary amendments. Our web-site needs updating and Claire is to speak to Cris Lewis re this. Date of Next Meeting Tuesday the 26th of February 2008 at the Red Lion Hotel, Epworth to start at 7.15pm. |