To help us survive the COVID19 pandemic and to be able to provide the opportunity to swim, be safe, compete at all levels and be healthy
With additional support financially, we will be able to continue to build our provision for our members back to pre COVID19 levels, we will be able to provide more and better training sessions, competition opportunities which in turn will enable us to expand the provision to even more people from the community.
Who are we?
Rushmoor Royals Swimming Club are a non-profit competitive swimming club in the North Hampshire area catering for swimmers from Aldershot, Farnborough, Fleet, Yateley, Camberley, Hook and surrounding areas.
Our club has a Learn to Swim section enabling hundreds of youngsters the opportunity to develop a precious life saving skill from as young as 3 and a half years old. Our lessons programme follows strong competitive swimming principles to enable every child the opportunity to be the strongest swimmer they can be, with many of our competitive swimmers giving back to the club when they become swimming teachers themselves, this gives all of our budding little fish the benefit of learning from the experience of some very strong swimmers!
We have a very strong competitive swimming section of the club and cater for athletes of all ages and abilities who wish to develop and improve their performances. The opportunities for the members of our club are varied and wide from our academy squads for those fresh out of lessons and looking to dip their toes into swimming, those who wish to swim for fitness, those who want to improve their competitive swimming and those who wish to become the next Olympic champion!
For more information about Rushmoor Royals please check out our website
Why are we crowdfunding?
We are appealing for financial support to help us survive and recover from the COVID19 pandemic to be able to help our local community and surrounding areas and provide them with the opportunity to swim at all levels, to not only participate in a key health and exercise activity but to also allow our members to dream and achieve their potential in swimming as a competitive sport at all levels.
Due to the COVID19 pandemic we have not been able to host our nationally recognised open meet competitions, which provide us with most of our income and allow us to keep swimming affordable and therefore accessible for all. Due to not hosting competitions in the last 10 months we have lost circa £65,000. With huge uncertainty around restrictions going forwards this can be expected to rise to over £100,000 before we are able to start running these competitions again in 2021. In addition the increased costs of returning to training and of ensuring that our swimmers are safe whilst taking part in the sport they love has put a huge strain on the club and its members.
We have set an ambitious but much needed target so your help and donations are extremely important to us!
The finances that we are able to raise through crowd funding, would allow our club to:
Ways you can help us:
We have set an ambitious but much needed target. There are many ways in which you can help us:
Pre-COVID19......
Prior to the challenges we are all now facing, our swimming club was going from strength to strength, we had just completed the 2020 County Championships and we celebrated achieving the most qualifiers from any club within the Hampshire county. In addition to this we saw our swimmers also break county records and in the past 12 months also breaking a WHOPPING 31 club records......this means that our current crop of swimmers are THE FASTEST to ever swim for the club!
We saw more swimmers qualifying for regional competitions and we doubled the number of swimmers qualifying for the National Championships with more than half of the swimmers actually qualifying for their first time EVER! …we also doubled our medal count at the championships! Due to their spectacular achievements throughout the year, 12 of our swimmers were recognised with selection onto the Swim England Talent pathway programmes too.
Our swimmers achieving these outstanding results serve as role models and inspiration for our younger generations and budding Olympians.
#aspire #perspire #inspire
During COVID-19
At the point of lockdown back in March 2020 we had just completed our host open meet which saw a record number of personal best times, club records broken and our swimmers were training for the Olympic trials a month later. We were also just weeks away from hosting our annual Level 1 swimming meet which provides opportunities for hundreds of swimmers travelling to Aldershot from around the country to compete. Our own swimmers were planning on using this opportunity to qualify for the 2020 regional and national competitions and the Olympic swimming trials.
Of course the COVID19 pandemic hit everyone hard, having to suddenly stop both their education and their swimming was a difficult time for all of our swimmers and their families, and the coaching team too...... Take a look below at some of the ways in which our amazing youngsters responded:
I am sure you will join us in being so very proud of how our #royalfamily came together whilst apart and showed extreme resilience and adaptability to JUST KEEP GOING!
In august we were FINALLY allowed to venture back into the place we love best....but it was not how we knew it.....the club's coaching team along with our army of volunteers worked so very hard to ensure that our training environment was now COVID19 safe, putting into place additional procedures to make sure our swimmers could start their return to training and rebuilding in the sport they love so very much.
We were so pleased that when the club put on additional Open Water opportunities in August to see so many new swimmers joining their teammates to try out this swimming discipline for the first time, and in collaboration with the Quays Lake in Mychett and Horseshoe lake in Yateley provided some much needed "out of the norm" socially distant group activities to start to bring our #royalfamily back together.
Of course we were ever so happy to be back into most of our beloved pools, with our main 50m pool at the Aldershot Garrison still closed and out of action we dug deep and with the thanks of our local places leisure facilities and our frogs and friends school facilities we were able to resume pool swim training.......and racing! One step ahead of the game in September and October 2020 we started to introduce in training time trial sessions to enable our swimmers to experience what they love to do best........swimming FAST! We also signed up to be part of 2 worldwide virtual swimming leagues, which saw our swimmers compete virtually against other swim teams from all around the world....check out our covid safe racing below:
Please Help Support Us
As you can see from all on this page, our club is more than just a swimming club, it is a place where people can go to, to dare to dream and achieve their goals, it is a #royalfamily and we wish to be able to continue providing this for our members and future members for many years to come.........to do this we need to make sure we can get back onto our feet now following the 3rd National lockdown in the UK.
You can help make this a reality.........please support us!
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