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Saxon Crown Newsletter
Saxon Crown Newsletter January 2019 Page 1
January 2019
Happy New Year to you all, we hope you all had a restful and peaceful holiday.
We had a great first part of the season and look forward to lots more fun and success in
the New Year.
We say welcome to a number of new coaches who have joined us since the start of the
season, including Tia Thornhill, Gabor Szell, Alison Patel, Lucy Nolan, Cecily Ward and
Andreia Souza, and also great to see some of our swimmers stepping up as Assistant
Coaches, including Mateusz Szopinski and Joseph Walters.
We made a small number of changes to the timetable at the turn of the year, having
reviewed the larger timetable re-structuring we undertook at the start of the season, and
hope that it has not inconvenienced anyone too much. We’re now happy with it and don’t
plan any more changes for the rest of the season.
Thanks so much to all of you who contributed to the recent JustGiving fundraising drive.
We raised £1150, some of which has been used to buy new equipment and also pay for
transport to the Arena League. With the beginning of a new year we would also really like
to get a parent fundraising team together so if you have any experience in fundraising or
any ideas that you’d like to put forward please get in touch, either to Neil Amos or Rozanne
Ferrigan … come on, don’t be shy we need your help.
We are always keen as well to get parents trained as officials and team managers for galas
so we can hold our own events and meet our responsibilities as a Club at galas.
We are pleased to announce that Rosalind Huish has agreed to be our new welfare officer.
Rosalind has been a masters swimmer and also has a child swimming at the Club.
Rosalind's details are now on our website, along with information about the role –
http://www.saxoncrown.org.uk/page/welfare-and-safety/15601
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If you need to contact her, please email her at [email protected] or 07786
431051.
The welfare role is a volunteer role and one of the most important in the Club. We are all
very grateful for Rosalind to be taking this on. Please give her all your support and co-
operation.
And a big thank you to Marion Levine who has been performing the role for the last 2.5
years. We are all grateful for the time and commitment she has given.
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GALA NEWS
We’ve had a busy three months leading up to Christmas with competition galas, team
galas and final rounds of leagues.
After all the excitement of a power cut at the Glassmill which meant Round 1 had to be
cancelled our Kent Junior League team had to wait till September and November before
they could head off all over Kent for
another lively two rounds
of swimming.
Unfortunately, even after
our brave and heroic
swimmers did their
absolute best, we were
beaten by Greenwich by
1 point and have been
relegated down a
League – we’ll be back
next year bigger and
better!!
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October, November and December saw our Arena League team heading off all over the
South East finding themselves up against some very strong competition. The Club
bounced back in Round 3 pulling out some amazing performances and fantastic team
spirit with us finishing above local rivals Greenwich Royals and staying in London
Division 1 for another year.
We now even have our own club chant, led ably by our Junior Captain Luke!!!
KENT DEVELOPMENT MEET – OCTOBER
This meet was held at the Medway Park, Gillingham over two days and loads of our
swimmers obtained PBs and had some great swims. Congratulations to everyone who
took part.
Congratulations to Timmy Adelowo for swimming his way onto the Kent Development
Camp based on his results at this meet.
LONDON WINTER REGIONALS – NOVEMBER
Luke, Katie, Mateusz, Owen, Renee, Kai travelled to the Aquatic Centre in Stratford to
compete in the London Winter Regionals. Congratulations to Mateusz for winning a silver
medal in the 200m butterfly.
BECKENHAM RISING STARS – NOVEMBER
Lots of our younger swimmers attended this gala and had a really good days swimming.
They really enjoyed themselves getting their swimming careers off the ground and have
now caught the competing bug!
BLACK LION WINTER OPEN – NOVEMBER
A massive Saxon Crown contingent headed down to Medway Park, Gillingham for a very
successful gala for our swimmers. A great weekend’s swimming was had by all!!
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BASILDON LAST CHANCE QUALIFIER – DECEMBER
On this very cold weekend Squads A, B+ and B headed to Basildon to give themselves the
chance to achieve their Kent Qualifying times, thankfully they were successful and came
away very happy.
CANTERBURY ICE BREAKER – JANUARY 2019
Blowing off the Christmas cobwebs we saw a huge number of our swimmers racing for
the last time before their Kent County Championship entry forms had to be in and for lots
of our swimmers it was a great weekend.
KENT CHAMPIONSHIPS 2019
A massive congratulations to each and every one of our swimmers who had their races
accepted this year. This year has broken new records yet again for the number of
swimmers entering. The freestyle events, in particular, were heavily oversubscribed,
74% over on 50m freestyle for girls and 52% on the boys 50m freestyle so to have been
accepted is a great achievement and you should be very proud of yourselves.
In our first weekend of racing we got seven medals, which is a great start and puts us ninth
in the points table – let’s keep it up!
If your swimmer has qualified, please don't waste the space, lots of other swimmers
have been disappointed.
Please note that the warm-up times at Crystal Palace have been bought forward an
hour, which will make a difference to all. Please check the website
https://www.kentswimming.org/spage-swimming-championships_2019.html
where you will find the updated Session Timing Guide for your information.
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UPCOMING GALAS
January
Kent County Champs 19th &
20th – London Aquatic
Centre, Stratford
Kent County Champs – 26th
& 27th – Crystal Palace
February
Kent County Champs – 2nd
& 3rd and 9th & 10th –
Crystal Palace
March
Erith Spring Meet – 2nd &
3rd March – Crook Log,
Bexley (Marlins to
Performance B Squads)
Team Luton March Open
Meet – 30th & 31st – Luton
(Top Club, A & B+ Squads)
April
Crawley Long Course Open
Meet – 5th, 6th & 7th –
Crawley (Top Club, A & B+
Squads)
TBC – Black Lion Regional
Chaser – 6th & 7th – Medway
Park, Gillingham (Marlins
to Performance B Squads)
Please note our attendance at the April Black Lion Gala is only provisional at this stage.
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MASTERS
At the beginning of September six Saxon masters made their way to Slovenia for the LEN
European Masters Championships. The week started strongly with Lauren winning two
gold medals in the 200m Freestyle and the 800m freestyle on the first two days. Bex came
within a whisker of adding to the medal tally, missing
out on bronze in the 100 free by 0.15 seconds and in the
50 free by 0.24 seconds. Throughout the event the six
swimmers amassed 10 swimming certificates for top 8
finishes. After the pool events were over Bex and Ruth
took part in the Open Water 5km race in the beautiful
lake Bled. Both swam amazingly against a tough field to
finish 13th and 15th respectively. Out of the water there
was plenty of time to explore the Julian Alps and the
Adriatic coast – all in all a pretty amazing experience!
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On 25th November the Saxon Masters took on the Swim England T30 Challenge.
Swimmers competed against the clock to see how far they could swim in 30 minutes. This
is the first time Saxon has taken part in this event. Eighteen swimmers managed to swim
an impressive 28km between them. Everyone managed to smash their personal targets
and final distances were entered into the Swim England competition and seven
competitors achieved top five finishes in their age groups. This was followed by a well-
deserved Christmas lunch in Deptford! Well done to everyone who took part and a
massive thank you to Colin for keeping time and motivating everyone on the day as well
as deciding the Saxon prize winners!
In August we held a joint warm weather training camp with Greenwich Masters. Over
four days swimmers completed six two-hour training sessions in the outdoor pool at
Calella near Barcelona, alongside some inventive land training from the Greenwich coach.
There was also plenty of time to get some additional swimming in the Mediterranean Sea.
Many thanks to Jenny for organising the trip!
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Also in the summer, four Saxon masters took part in the 10km dock2dock swim at Royal
Victoria docks. Bex and Mark completed the
5km swim and Ruth and Tristram the very
impressive 10km distance. All finished with
great times despite the windy and wavy
conditions.
In October Lauren and Kat headed to the
Swim England Masters Championships in Sheffield. In a packed programme, and with 11
events between them, they managed a great set of personal bests. Lauren took first place
in both the 200 free and the 200 backstroke.
A brave contingent of Saxon Masters took on the Brockwell cold water swimming gala at
Brockwell lido in November. Working with
Greenwich Royals as the GROSAX team, they
faced water temperatures of 10 degrees (a little
colder than Barcelona!) and raced across a range
of events including a 400m cold water endurance
race and the hotly contested novelty hat race.
Overall a respectable second place to
Parliament Hill lido and a very welcome sauna
afterwards!
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HEAD COACH’S REPORT
PROGRESSION
Having made a number of changes over the summer we expected to have a teething period
where swimmers, coaches and all involved with the club took a little time to adapt to the
changes. Fortunately, this did not take any time at all and, apart from a couple of issues
in the first week, everyone settled into our new routine extremely well. The changes have
led to great improvements across all squads across the club, more people wanting to
compete and generally a much more positive atmosphere within the club. We have still
got plenty of things to improve but we are going in the right direction as a club and will
continue to gain more and more success in the remainder of the season.
We had amazing success at the meets we attended which has led to 21 Saxon Swimmers
being accepted into the Kent County Championships which started on the 19th January.
A personal highlight of mine had to be the final round of the Arena League at which our
swimmers were fantastic! The support they gave each other was amazing and something
I had not seen in the club until that point and hopefully that will continue into all our
meets moving forward.
ON TRACK
As I have previously mentioned, this year would always be a year which would involve us
restructuring the club to give swimmers the best possible chance of improving, no matter
what the end goal for the individual is.
I have been so impressed with how quickly swimmers in the club are improving, some of
the results I have seen so far outweighed my expectations at this stage of the season but
the biggest thing I have seen is a huge improvement in the atmosphere around the club.
When I first came to the club the atmosphere was flat and didn’t have much of a club feel.
It is totally different now, swimmers and coaches seem to be enjoying what they are doing
and the feeling around the club is great.
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Having been part of successful teams myself the biggest thing that gets any swimmer
through the difficult moments throughout a season is having a great network of friends
and support in a club. I can feel the club getting to that point which I believe will give us
the chance to create an even more successful environment for every swimmer at the club.
Keep working hard and let’s see what we can achieve over the next few months of the
season.
Go Saxon!!
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VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
Saxon Crown has now over 500 swimmers and as we grow as a club there becomes an
ever increasing need for more parents to volunteer to help make things run smoothly.
This is especially so when the club is hosting galas such as the Future Champs and Club
Champs, if anyone is interested in becoming a volunteer please email Neil at
RAISING A CONCERNS
We have established routes for raising a concern, which we recognise may happen from
time to time. In the first instance please arrange a time to talk to coaches, or contact the
welfare officer if you'd prefer. Details on how to do this are on our website - under Club
Information. Please do not come on poolside uninvited to talk to a coach, or to interrupt
them if they are meeting someone else. They need to supervise swimmers and not be
distracted.
SUPPORTING YOUR SWIMMER
It is great to be enthusiastic about your swimmers' achievements but please don't put
them under pressure to perform. There is a great video on YouTube about this, which is
worth everyone watching, called "It's our game not yours"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8R50LdkTVc
PHOTOGRAPHY
Photography is not permitted in any of our training sessions unless agreed in advance
with the Club and the Leisure Centre.
FEEDBACK
We encourage our coaches to give feedback first and foremost direct to the swimmers
rather than parents, and, to keep fees down, we do not provide written reports on
progress. Please contact the coach concerned if you wish to discuss a swimmer's
progression but ideally this is always done with the swimmer present as they are the ones
who need to learn how to swim better, not us parents!
Many thanks in your co-operation in making Saxon Crown a friendly and supportive
amateur sports club.
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SAXON CROWN CLUB KIT
The Club kit plays an important role in making the Saxon Crown members feel part of
the club, it also projects a united image at the competitions we attend.
Club kit will play a significant role in Welfare / Child Protection e.g. making it easier
for swimmers and officials to be located quickly on a busy poolside.
Our kit will provide a consistent identity through the use of the same design, colours
and typeface across the different products.
The kit supplier is Sports Scene Direct based in Welling (95 Bellegrove Rd, Welling
DA16 3PG). They are more than happy for you to pop along so you can try the kit on
before you buy it to ensure you get the right size as personalized items cannot be
refunded
The kit can be easily ordered online at
http://www.macronlondonsoutheast.com/saxon-crown-190-c.asp
THE T-SHIRT IS COMPULSORY AT ALL GALAS. WE ALSO STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU PURCHASE THE OTHER PRODUCTS AS IT PROJECTS A POSITIVE IMAGE OF THE CLUB.