Christchurch Seagulls Swimming Club Covid Appeal

About Us

Christchurch Seagulls swimming Club is a friendly and competitive club based in Christchurch and was formed over 40 years ago. We also swim at New Milton, Lymington and Ferndown and offer children from 5 years old through to Masters specialised coaching from our team of highly qualified coaches. We also offer Water Polo and Synchronised swimming.

We currently have approximately 150 members and swimmers are allocated to different squads depending on their ability. They are taught the fundamentals of competitive swimming to include skills, technique, speed, sportsmanship and teamwork. 

We had 1 swimmer qualify for the Olympic trials this year - this has been postponed until next year. Another of our swimmers has been selected for Swim Wales National Youth Development Squad. Our swimmers regularly compete at British & English Nationals together with Regional and County Championships.

We are a well known club in the local area & hope to be able to continue to provide swimming opportunities for local children in the future.

Why are we fundraising ?

We were fortunate to be able to return to swimming on 25th July after 4 months out of the water. However, we have seen our pool hire costs increase and due to restrictions on numbers allowed in the pool at any one time, our swimmers pool time has actually being reduced. This has put a huge financial strain on the club which is run by volunteers and is not for profit. We cannot sustain these costs for many months and ultimately the club's future is under threat.

We cannot keep asking parents of members to pay more for swimming when their children are getting less swimming hours.

Any income that we may have been able to raise through galas have been made impossible under the current guidance.

We need your help for the club to continue through these unprecedented times.

How will we use the money raised ?

We need the additional funds in order to meet our pool hire and coaching costs. We are looking at every possible option to save costs. We need to retain the services of our coaches and to support members experiencing financial difficulties. We need to support all of the swimmers to keep them involved with the club and their friendships forged over their years of training and competing with other swimmers.

Our Committee has worked tirelessly to get the swimmers back in the pool and had to deal with risk assessments, health assessments, stringent procedures with our leisure centres and in the pool. To adhere to social distancing in the pool, extra pool time was required to accommodate all swimmers. This has resulted in the increased costs to the club which we simply cannot sustain for long.