Leek ASC - Covid-19

Our Club

Leek ASC is a small but successful swimming club based in the historic market town of Leek.  The club has been part of the community since 1932 and is one of the oldest clubs serving Staffordshire Moorlands.  We are a fully inclusive swimming club that not only has competitive squads but provides support to a masters section for ex-club swimmers and adults who swim for fitness, as well as sessions for non-competitive swimmers who wish to participate in a sport they love without competing in galas.

We are all volunteers

The club is run by a dedicated team of volunteers, many of whom no longer have children still swimming. The coaches work voluntarily, devoting a huge amount of their own time to the club, including weekends, evenings, and even overnight stays at swimming galas across the country. Despite the coaches working voluntarily, the costs of running the club remain high due to the cost of pool hire and life-guards to cover the 15 hours of pool time the club has  each week. 

As a not for profit, accredited community amateur sports club (CASC), we rely on donations and grants to train our coaches and also ensure they and other club volunteers are compliant with current child safety legislation. As our fees are set to cover costs, this means we do not have much surplus income.  

The club relies heavily on donations and fundraising in order to keep the fees to our members as low as possible. This ensures that families on lower incomes can have access to the club and all that it can offer a young child. The club continues to organise many fund-raising events throughout the year and some families donate money to keep the club running strongly. However, as a result of Covid-19 we have been unable to run the fundraising events that we rely upon.

Covid-19

Since March, due to Covid-19, we’ve been unable to give our members any pool time. We therefore made a decision to stop collecting fees as we wanted to support our members through this difficult and uncertain time. Not all clubs made this decision. 

This has resulted in our swimmers being left adrift as they have been unable to do any water-based training for the last few months. Having surveyed our parents, an overwhelming majority of them confirmed that the closure of the club has had a detrimental impact on their child and they cannot wait to get back into full time swimming to exercise with their friends again. 

Please help us raise some valuable funds to allow us to continue to support our club members and the community. As a result of Covid-19 our operating costs will increase and restrictions on social distancing will mean further pressure on costs. It is important for our members and the wider community, who may wish to join the club in the future, that we can keep our fees low so that we can stay accessible to as many people in our community as possible. Additionally, in order to provide our swimmers with some additional support whilst we still cannot offer full time swimming we would like to start an outside land based training programme, which would enable the children to safely meet up, have a structured work out with a qualified teacher and give them a chance to blow off some steam and catch up with friends.

The club is at the heart of the town and the surrounding areas and we really would appreciate your support. There are larger swimming clubs in the area, but with these being at least a one hour round trip for many of our members, it would not be possible for them to join those clubs so a large number of aspiring swimmers would be lost from the sport, or not take it up in the first place.