Coaches - Year Close-Out

As the year comes to an end,  I want to take the opportunity to thank you all for all your hard work this year regardless of whether you were on-deck with our developing athletes, behind the scenes internally helping run the club day-to-day, or council side ensuring our sessions are adequately lifeguarded and showing your support for the future.

For those of you who have recently joined the committee or for those of you who are new to the coaching team, you probably are not aware that less than 12 months ago, we faced a rather difficult and emotional scenario which may have led to the collapse of City of Wakefield SC. Without divulging into that situation too much, we managed to find the support of our council through Liz Blenkinsop and the Aquatics Team, and through the hard work of Karen (Chair), Lee (Treasurer), Paul (Entries Sec), Neil (Membership), and the support of Ex-Olympic Coach Russ Barber, we managed to form a partnership which should support our pathway full of aspiring athletes over the coming years.

Back to the pool, the 2021-22 season saw City of Wakefield SC take two Athletes to the Summer Home Nation Competitions, which span over several weeks in July and August and bring together the best 50 athletes in each age group. Wakefield’s Competitors faired extremally well across the championships, notably with Hannah Smith putting herself 18th in the country at 200m Butterfly, and Tom Winning a medal (2nd) at English Nationals in the 13/14 Years Category (he was only 13!). 2021-22 also saw some great success for our development squads at the club, with plenty of gold medals won at county level, and a drastic increase in Qualifying Times at both County and Regional Levels. The success for 2021-22 doesn’t end there though, we also had Ex-full-time swimmer and current Coach Harrison Lee qualify for the Age Group European Triathlon Championships Representing Team GB. As the club continued to grow and improve, we also saw Thomas Raddings (Down Syndrome Swimming GB) and Dad Terry Raddings (Head of Special Olympics – Yorkshire & Humberside) switch from another Local club in the area to continue their journey to international success which kicked off with a Medals Galore at the Summer Series of Sport Special Olympics. 

2022-23 Then – we’re only a matter of weeks in, but whats been happening? 

The season began with a Pre-Season meeting, where coaches laid out the plans for the season with the hope of inspiring the athletes to go one better and make them aware of habits and self-inflicted constraints from the previous season. The parents of the athletes didn’t miss out either, with Olympic Coach Russ Barber delivering a presentation all around supporting the Coach-Athlete-Parent relationship. Thanks to those of you that helped with the coordination of arranging this.

On day 1 of the new season, we were notified of 2 major selections for National Silver medallist Tom Wooffindin: One to represent the county of Yorkshire at Inter-County Teams, and the other being a selection onto Phase 3 of the National Swimming Talent pathway, with the hope of landing a spot on the prestigious British Swimming Podium Potential programme from age 15. As part of the strategy to get our athletes race sharp for the season, we took 49 swimmers to Doncaster Dartes’ September Sprints, and took home the Top Club Award as a memento for our successes across the weekend. Up next was Winter Yorkshires, with another large hall of Pennants (handed to the top 10 in each Age Group) and medals coming home, thanks to some excellent swimming by both our Development and Age Group athletes. Thomas Raddings continued his 2021 successes over in Portugal at the 10th Down Syndrome Swimming & Artistic Championships, coming home with a bronze medal in the 4x100 Freestyle Relay. Next up was the elusive NER championships, with Co Wakefield taking 14 Swimmers (approx. 20% of our members) who competed in 55 events over the weekend. Other Meets in the first cycle Included the Hull Richardson Meet, and the Co Leeds Christmas Cracker Meet at both of which we had an abundance of excellent swimming both technically and using the stopwatch.

Across all events so far this season, we have seen a 97% Short Course PB Ratio and a 92% Long Course PB Ratio, which comes much to my surprise. In a normal season, we expect around the 60-70% marker, so hats off to the guys who are putting a shift in day-in-day-out. We have also exceeded all of last year’s entries for the longer distance events, showing that across all squads, athletes are becoming more confident to enter things that push them outside their comfort zones. For more detail on the split of these PB’s, please see the Cycle 1 Summary file attached. As a coaching team, we’ve also been blessed in recent weeks with the introduction of underwater Headsets which allow us to speak to athletes to correct their stroke instantaneously. These were a generous investment by one of our club parents. Combining the headsets with the Go-Pro should make us one of the most technically able clubs nationally (excluding Performance Centres and School Programmes).

Recent Success has also resulted in a drastic influx of enquiries to join the club, particularly from Age Group Swimmers from the so called ‘Traditional Top 5’ Clubs. I think we are making a HUGE case to disrupt that top 5 if Co Wakefield SC continues to evolve and recruit as it has in recent months. 

Before I sign off, I just want to reaffirm that all of this achievement and success wouldn’t have been possible without the passion of all of you, regardless of how big a part you have played - Things really are looking bright.

So have a fantastic Christmas, take the time to reset and recharge, and hopefully I’ll see you all in the new year – with new limits to push

Season Greetings to you all 

Harvey Williamson
Coaching Director
City of Wakefield SC