Chair's Report

This has been another successful year in terms of performance and achievements. We will be recognising these remarkable efforts later, but suffice to say, we had a number of great swims individually at Club Championships, time trials, league meets and open meets.

We had more younger swimmers than ever at County Championships last month, and more representing Bushey at Regional Championships at Luton and Norfolk, including a swimmer from Bushey representing Hertfordshire in the regional relay team.

One of our swimmers represented their school at the ESSA National Schools finals at the London Aquatic Centre, and a number of our hardy swimmers braved the great Norfolk outdoors to swim the open water Regional Championships, with many coming back with medals.

We had an amazing team at County Masters, who all had fantastic swims, and even some great swims at master’s Nationals, again coming back with medals and Championship records.

At the junior level of the Club, we had our first ever Junior development gala, where some of our younger swimmers were, in some cases, introduced to the competitive aspects of the sport for first time, well done to all those swimmers, and I’d like to thank the teachers, coaches, officials and parents for supporting this.

Our aim is for the club to develop even further though both in numbers and abilities, however, with natural progression in life, we are continually looking to increase and replace our swim squad, bank of volunteers and of course strengthen our finances. Kelly Nash, our Club Treasurer, will run through this a little later.

A number of the committee have been working alongside Andrea Fraser to maintain the Clubs Swim Mark accreditation. This is the recognition by Swim England that the Club offers quality provision of its members, coaches and committee by demonstrating high standards of welfare, management, and training. My thanks to everyone who has contributed to this.

As we will see this evening, there are a number of aspects in which a swimming club is run, and with the exception of Terry Davies, our Head Coach, everyone who contributes to the Club does so on a voluntary basis. We need a continual input of volunteers to grow the Club, run it efficiently and reduce the workload for those already helping. Whether its poolside, an admin role, raising funds, on the committee, you see yourself in whites as an official, or even a teacher or later, a coach, the support you give not only benefits your children, but can even enhance your own skill set, and maybe that opportunity to add to your LinkedIn profile or CV.

We are looking to develop our fundraising activities, and will be shortly announcing a new initiative which you can sign up to….more of that over the coming weeks. Also, we are looking for further sponsorship, so if you own, or are influential in a business which would like some brand awareness within the club, we really want to talk to you!

We have several new and vacant roles available, which we will cover shortly, so be ready to put your hands up!

I am extremely proud of the contributions made by the parents, teachers, coaches, officials, Club Captains and Vice Captains, committee members and volunteer poolside helpers, and of course the swimmers. Parents, get involved, be a part of the Bushey family and help us grow our Club.  Parents…….., relish and enjoy the opportunities to watch your children swimming, they are all

athletes in their own rights, and welcome the support you give them.

Finally,……… moving forward, we need to grow and sustain the Club, try more open meets if you haven’t already, break more records, try for the league events, lets build on our squad achievements, and really make Bushey a force to be reckoned with in the water!  Together, we can be better, faster, stronger than we already are.