Plymouth Diving Covid-19 Crowdfunding

As we all know COVID-19 has had an effect on our children. Not only have they not been able to go to school and see their friends and family but they have not been able to train for the sport they have all grown to love! Many of our divers have been training for months for their National competitions, from the youngest planning to compete in their very first National competition to the High-Performance divers planning to qualify for the Olympics. All of these National and International competitions were cancelled and all of their training ceased immediately with Plymouth Life Centre being closed on 20th March.  This has had a huge impact on these children.

They have also recently been told that the Plymouth Life Centre will remain closed for some major works to take place, due to the scale of these essential works the centre will remain closed until April 2021! This has come as a huge blow to the divers, the parents and the coaches and many aspirations, goals and ambitions have been shattered. 

Obviously, everyone is working hard to try and find a way for these children to be able to train in some capacity, but it all costs money.

Many of the usual fundraising events that we had planned we have not been able to do, so when we heard that Sport England were offering matched funding via Crowdfunding we had to try and get involved!

Plymouth Diving needs your help!

To help get these divers back to some sort of training we need to raise money for:

- Regular trips to the closest pools with diving boards

- Rental charges for mini buses

- Expenses for the coaches

- subsidising families who cannot afford this type of extra cost, especially those who have been hit hardest by COVID-19. 

- Access to local gymnastics facilities

- Rental charges

Even when the pool reopens in April 2021 in order to start the training for the divers the club would require additional gym equipment to comply with the social distancing rules.

This will be a huge cost for the club and we have a short period of time to try and raise some funds to be able to afford this equipment. 

Many of our diver’s families have been hit particularly hard by the financial effects of COVID-19 and as a club we want to be able to help those families to make sure the divers continue to be able to attend competitions and camps next year. The majority of competitions for us are many miles away, in Southampton, Leeds, Sheffield, London, Scotland and even some International destinations. The expense for this is immense and it would be great as a club to be able to aid those who have been hit most. 

The next few months ahead will be full of challenges for us as a club, but we will overcome them with your help.  Our aim is to continue the success of the club prior to Covid-19 and give every opportunity possible to our divers to achieve their true potential whilst enjoying a great sport but to also ensure the general public can learn our sport and enjoy it safely.

Any amount of money that you can donate these costs will be truly appreciated.   

The Challenge 

We could just ask for donations but we thought we would set our divers a challenge to get everyone involved in trying to raise some money for the club. The divers propose to walk, run or cycle the miles we would have travelled to National Skills in Corby, National Age Groups in Sheffield and The Roma Junior Diving Cup in Rome totalling to 3758 miles. 

Individually all the divers do their miles every day and log them on Strava. 

We are having a challenge day on 25th July to complete any mile’s leftover in Central Park where we plan to run, walk or cycle in squads. We will also encourage the public to take part and record some miles for us to involve people and help motivate people to be active.

We are aiming to raise £6,000.

There are different ways to give on Crowdfunding:

You can pledge an amount for nothing in return and we will place you in our Prize Draw automatically for a chance to win Adrenaline Quarry tickets, a Swimzi onesie and a Swimzi water bottle.

Or

You can choose one of the many rewards, each reward has a different pledge value from £10. See our updates or visit our facebook page Positively Plymouth Diving for pictures and more detail! 

Positive Impact on the Community

Positive Impact on the Community

Plymouth Diving has been an integral part of Plymouth for many years. We believe diving benefits the local community by getting children of all ages active, helping them overcome fears, build confidence and help them to believe in themselves to perform spectacular dives. We work alongside Swim England to recruit and train children from schools across Plymouth and give them the opportunity to become a part of our team. We involve inactive teenagers to give them something to focus on and encourage health and fitness and we actively reduce accidents in Devon by educating people to dive safely. 

During lockdown we have kept in contact with our divers and have engaged families who haven’t been able to get out providing online workouts, live zoom workouts and even been available for the children to talk about their mental health. We have kept the sport going in the city by keeping our community together.

We intend to use some of the funds raised to help with the cost of the equipment to enable us to open up the diving pool to the general public to enjoy their sessions and get people active and learn and enjoy diving.

We plan to help people who are volunteering for the club in getting their coaching qualification. 

We also plan to help families hit the most financially by COVID-19 to enjoy our sport and to become members of the club and we will help our existing members if they are struggling to afford the costs of competitions and camps for the Z and Y England teams. 

Diving brings thousands of people to Plymouth each year with all the clubs coming to the Life Centre to compete in many competitions and we hope to be able to continue this next year. People from the community enjoy coming to spectate these competitions and local hotels and businesses benefit from the added tourism.