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NOFIO CYMRU SWIM WALES Swim Wales Nofio Cymru Annual Report 2013 - 2014 Principal Partner Funding Partner Ocial Partners NOFIO CYMRU SWIM WALES Contents Board Report ............................................................. 2 - 4 Building the Framework for Success .............. 6 - 9 Disabilty ................................................................ 10 - 11 Diving Report ..................................................... 12 - 13 Education and Training ............................................ 14 Events & Volunteering .............................................. 15 Masters ............................................................................ 16 Performance ....................................................... 17 - 21 Water Polo .......................................................... 22 - 25 Safeguarding Standards ........................................... 26 Swim Wales Sport Science ..................................... 28 Accounts .............................................................. 30 - 31 Jazz Carlin In the remainder of the report you will be given a flavour of the achievements across our aquatics disciplines and how we are trying to give all young people a really useful life skill – the ability to swim and be safe in water. The record results achieved at the Commonwealth Games of 2 Gold, 2 Silver and 3 bronze medals are the highest ever achieved by a Welsh team at the Commonwealths, Jazz Carlin breaking the 40 year fast of a Gold medal in the ladies events to be followed the next day by Georgia Davies achieving our second Gold. Jazz and Georgia also achieved Silver Medals and along with first time Bronze medals from Calum Jarvis, Jack Thomas and Dan Jervis made the record books. We are entering the next 4 year funding cycle with Sport Wales, without the Welsh Government and their help we would not have hit our targets of seven medals at the Commonwealth Games, for that the Board would like to thank them both for their continued support Jazz, Georgia and Jemma Lowe followed this up by achieving Gold, Silver and Bronze medals in the European Championships, the total haul at these games was a new British high of 24 medals, 9 Gold, 7 silver and 8 Bronze of which our Welsh contingent of Jazz attained 2 Gold, Georgia 1 Silver and 1 Bronze and Georgia and Jemma a Gold in a new World Record in the 4 x 100 metre Mixed relay and bronzes on the ladies 4 x 100 metre Medley Team Relay. A week before this Jack Thomas also achieved two Silver medals and one Bronze medal at the IPC equivalent of the European Championships in Eindhoven, yet another meritorious result. Calum Jarvis Wales achieve highest ever results in both Commonwealth Games and European Championship swimming This has been an exciting year and the culmination of another 4-year Commonwealth Games campaign. The best ever results for Swim Wales and a great tribute to Martyn Woodroffe and his team of coaches and support staff which was even more outstanding considering that halfway through the campaign, funding for the Intensive Training Centre in Swansea was curtailed. But there have been other outstanding developments for Swim Wales. In cooperation with the Unitary Authorities, Assembly Government and Sport Wales we are spearheading a national campaign to ensure that young people can swim by the age of 11 years. Our ambitious target is to achieve the figure by 2020 and this is proving to be a real challenge but Aqua Passport in all its guises is proving a real winner with young people. In theory, the learn-to-swim campaign should help recruit more young people into the sport but we all need to review the capacity and ability of our clubs to respond positively to the challenge – the major subject of our autumn conference. We have some great examples of clubs re-inventing themselves in an effort to meet the challenges resulting from cuts in spending on leisure facilities and we all need to work closely with one another to survive and prosper in another very difficult period. 2 Swim Wales Nofio Cymru Annual Report 2013 - 2014 3 Our continued thrust of every child a swimmer and 100,000 members are both on track and bode well towards our 2020 targets, both of these of course depend on continued support from the Welsh Government, Sport Wales, the Local Authorities, Schools and you, our swimming clubs. Interestingly by forming a multi discipline club we have seen significant improvements in our ability to retain members and we would urge you all to seriously consider such a development. Aqua Passport continues in attracting more and more interest and we will be launching the programme into other sports during the next year. Our continued success in education and training of the next generation of tutors has also benefitted by the new technologies, tutors now using tablets both to demonstrate and record results of our candidates during our UKCC courses. This together with e-learning has allowed us to maintain our prices on all UKCC courses. Water Polo has had a significant year in competitions which included the Commonwealth Championship Competition in Aberdeen. It is good to see all of our squads improving as it is to see Diving’s development improvements again this year. We continue to follow our strategy on developing our performance clubs throughout Wales with Nofio Clwyd forming this year and our discussions with Cardiff for a High Performance Centre advancing well. As this report goes to print we must all acknowledge the retirement of Martyn Woodroffe our National Performance Director. He returned to Wales in 2005 and has achieved more success than ever during his term with us. Martyn has decided that it’s time he spends more time with his family and is leaving at the end of September. The Board is sure that all of our members would like to express their grateful thanks to Martyn for his sterling and dedicated work with Swim Wales. Well done Martyn and have a long and happy retirement. Board Report Roger Eady – Chairman Robert James - Chief Executive Officer. 4 Swim Wales Nofio Cymru Annual Report 2013 - 2014 5 Building the framework for Success The Swim Wales team have been continuing our work to strengthen the links from when a child Learn to Swim starts the learn to swim process all the way through elite swimming. Working alongside our clubs, Sport Wales, Local Authorities and private providers, we have made good advances into our The Swim Wales Learn to Swim plan continues to be implemented across Wales and we are objectives in 2012-2013. having great feedback from teachers and swimmers alike. The national plan now has footprints in: Carmarthen, Swansea, Cardiff, the Vale, Wrexham, RCT, Torfaen, Flintshire, Denbighshire, Bridgend and Powys, with conversations progressing in other areas. Clubs: With 85 clubs in Wales, we need to ensure that we are offering our members a quality service Aqua Passport is also making a difference around Wales. We see this as the way forward in from the moment they join a club. It is our collective responsibility to have skilled and qualified learning to swim. With the support of Sport Wales we provide a structure in Wales that takes a coaches that are teaching swimmers the basics of stroke technique and ensuring we give every child from pre learn to swim all the way to elite. swimmer the correct basics to maximise their potential. Our goal is to have every child a swimmer by 2020. Whist we need each Local Authority and Alongside this we now have a structure in Wales that caters for different levels of swimmers, from education to play their part for us to achieve this ambitious goal, Swim Wales has made good development, competitive, performance and elite. It is important that we all put the swimmer’s inroads into providing the framework for our partners to implement to achieve this. progression first and sometimes this means encouraging them to move into a more competitive We have finished our work on developing a school swimming plan and strategy that we look to programme that gives them what they need. implement in 2015. This strategy gives a structure to school swimming programmes and goes Our goal over the coming years is to encourage in partnership with Local Authorities more multi side by side with the Welsh National plan. Getting all children in Wales to be able to swim will not aquatic clubs. The advantage of these clubs are that by having different disciplines such as water only make the population safer, it will give many more children an opportunity to participate in polo, diving, masters/adult swimming and synchronised swimming, we are able to attract a larger aquatic activities throughout their lives. number of participants into the club. It also allows for people to switch between the disciplines, for example a water polo player who no longer wants to play could easily do some masters swimming or move into a competitive swimming programme. This wider offering means more members in numbers and a more sustainable financial club. We are in current discussions with some LA’s to try to set up more multi aquatic programmes. One major success last year was the formation of Swansea Aquatics which has all the aquatic offering and has seen membership grow by over 16% in a year. The club now has 80 new Water Polo members in addition to a strong Synchro and Masters programme, whilst having the best results in the pool by any Welsh club last year. 6 Swim Wales Nofio Cymru Annual Report 2013 - 2014 7 Quotes Minister for Culture & Sport, John Griffiths AM, who attended the launch event at the Cardiff International Pool, said: “ The Aqua Passport is an innovative scheme designed to encourage children to learn a life skill in a safe and fun environment. Swimming is a great way to keep fit and all children should have the opportunity to learn to swim at an early age. This new scheme is designed to improve the overall experience of swimming for young people, their parents or guardians, teachers and clubs and should help us deliver our commitment to make every child in Wales a swimmer.” Georgia Davies, 2014 Commonwealth Games silver medallist swimmer, said: “ It’s great to see the national launch of a new learn to swim scheme in Wales.