Kim McConville Sportsmanship Award 2025/2026

Ten years ago, one our coaches, Kim McConville left South Ayrshire Swim Team and returned to her home in Perth Australia. Kim had been involved for 14 years with South Ayrshire Swim Team through her children, Eilidh, Finn and Rory all swimming with the team and as a coach of Prestwick Development Squad, Junior squad at the time and was one of the initial coaches with the Para squad. Before she left, she arranged to have a trophy awarded to a swimmer in one of the Development Squads who has shown a high level of commitment, sportsmanship and care for their fellow teammates.

This year the coaches had a harder than usual job making their decision and there were 5 strong contenders for the award. In the end, the swimmer who has been nominated to receive the award this year has shown great commitment since joining the club in September last year.

During training sessions in their Development Squad, they are attentive , open to suggestions on how to improve their strokes, they are always well natured and obviously happy to take part in every session. They do have a playful side to them as well but never take things too far. From the very start, this swimmer has entered the competitive side of the club and was an obvious choice for the Mini League Team where they supported every swimmer and celebrated every swim. One of the Mini League Coaches said that this particular swimmer always swam their heart out, never questioned the swims they were asked to do and was constantly asking for the names of other swimmers in order to cheer them on.

It's rare for this Trophy to be awarded to someone so young and new to the club, but the impact this swimmer has made on their teammates and coaches made a difficult decision easy in the end. The winner of the Kim McConville Sportsmanship Award for season 2024/2025 is Robbie H from Troon Development Squad. Well done Robbie!