Happy New Year 2017

Dear Club members, Wishing you all a happy and highly successful New Year 2017!

As we power into the New Year, it seemed like a good time to highlight again some of the many successes the Club enjoyed over the last 12 months. It really has been another fantastic year for our swimmers across all ages and I'm sure you'll join the Committee in congratulating everyone who has competed for the Club in 2016. Here is a selection of things that have made us feel particularly proud:

• Swimmers competing with distinction at National, Regional and County level.
• Some fantastic performances at galas, producing Personal Bests, returning with medals and showing ever improving technique.
• An increase in swimmers attending the Development Galas, building their confidence and skills for the future.
• Overall and individual success at BBAT in September.
• A very large number of Arena League 'best performances' (despite not managing to hold onto our place in the Division).
• Swimmers selected for the SE Regional Athlete Development Programme.
• Swimmers selected for the Oxfordshire & North Buckinghamshire Development Days.
• Club members representing GBR at the Triathlon and Aquathlon World Champs in Mexico.
• An increase in swimmers competing in Open Water events.
• Another highly successful overseas Swim Camp with our friends at Thame Swimming Club.
• More participation by Club swimmers in Triathlon events.
• Our Masters swimmers going from strength to strength.

In addition to this, Danny, Claire and Derric became Level 1 qualified Coaches and we've also had parents become qualified as Judges. Having qualified coaches and judges is critical to the smooth running and effective development of the Club, and we're enormously grateful that we have people who are prepared to invest in the future of the Club in this way.

A special mention and huge thank you also goes to Steve Fabes to highlight what a fantastic job he did in pulling together and coordinating our Arena League squad. The Club benefits enormously from participation in this league - no matter what the results are. The format creates a terrific environment for bringing together a sense of team spirit, and we again showed we have that by the bucket load!

As we move forward into 2017, the Committee will continue to implement an action plan that was put together following very many long hours discussing at length the provision of coaching at the Club. It addresses the Code of Conduct and expectation of behaviours for coaches, swimmers, parents and volunteers; the structure and governance of the squad system; and the processes we follow. This is all designed to maximise the experience and expertise of our coaches and maximise our pool time to the benefit of all our swimmers. More details of this will follow in the coming weeks.

I'd like to finish by thanking everyone for your support of the Club in 2016 and again wishing you a healthy and successful New Year 2017.

Kind regards,

Nick Baum

Chairman,

Didcot Barramundi Swim Club.