Bradford Swimming Club is a volunteer run swimming club based in West Yorkshire. We have over a 100 members aged between 5 and 55. Our members represent the club on local, regional and national levels and we have produced swimmers who are now on the elite international pathway. We train a minimum of 4 nights a week and compete most weekends during the competitive season. Most of the volunteers will be involved in something to do with the club 7 days a week, whether this is as a coach, assistant coach, parent or an administration role. The club wouldn't be able to exist without them.
The Covid 19 pandemic has hit us hard, pools and leisure centres were the first of the sporting facilities to be shut and with still only two thirds of these have reopened since the lockdown rules were relaxed. As you can imagine our swimmers were devistated. Not only couldn't they see their school friends but their only outlet and form of exercise out of school had been so cruley taken from them. Being fully aware of not only the physical but mental strain the swimmers would be under our Head Coach, (Sara) was the first to react to this uncertain and stressful time. Organised Zoom meetings and socially distanced outdoor land training took place as soon as allowed. And regular catch ups, phone calls and text messages help ease the burden out young swimmers were under.
Fast forward 6 months to the summer and pools were due to reopen only for the government to reinstate stricter sanctions on leisure centres. All this whilst other sports happily began to return to training. Patiently we waited, still continuing on with our land training and zoom meetings. September came and the announcement from local authroirites that they would be reopenning their pools on a phased return. This was the news we were waiting for, or so we thought. The hundreds of exercise hours and zoom meetings were about to pay off, but the three Bradford pools we use weren't on that list! and still remain unaccessable to us. Our only pool is Bradford University and they have raised prices and tightened restrictions.
So our aim with this page is to raise funds to provide a safe environment for the swimmers to train. To provide the best possible equipment and coaching so they can begin to catch up on the time they've missed. The funds will be used to purchase equipment, (as we can no longer share) needed to achieve this along with offsetting some of the rising costs of pool hire and to ensure that the kids just don't miss out.
Thanks in advance for your support.