Primary Squad

Coach: Sarah Thomas

The Primary Squad provides a fun, safe and unpressured training environment in which swimmers will gain valuable experience to help develop their training skills and techniques.

Primary Squad sessions are not swimming lessons and are not organised and run as such. It is a specially planned training program based on the Long Term Athlete Development pathway Stage 2 – Swim Skills - building technique and learning competitive skills. It is designed to develop training and basic competition skills for competitive swimming. Swimmers do not progress in the same way as swimming lessons and generally stay in the squad for 1 or 2 years until they have reached the appropriate age and grasped the skills of how to train properly.

A strict age limit applies to moving to and from the Primary Squad as a means of protecting swimmers from over training. Too much pressure and over emphasis on winning at a young age can lead to burn out.

It does more harm than good to push swimmers far too early and it is our duty to protect them.

•      Attendance to sessions is flexible and swimmers can swim in different sessions each week as long as they do an absolute minimum of 2 sessions per week. The maximum is 5 sessions per week. See training times here

•      Swimmers must always bring a drink to training and be encouraged to drink before, during and after exercise as part of a healthy lifestyle.

•      Swimmers must have a large sports bag and put all their belongings inside to be placed on poolside for the duration of the session.

•      Boys must wear trunks that can be tied up as they have a tendency to fall down when pushing of the wall and diving in.

•      Everyone with long hair must wear a swimming hat and everyone must wear goggles.

All Primary Squad swimmers are expected to:

•      be the minimum age of 8 years and the maximum of 11 years, subject to ability.

•      show a commitment to swimming a MINIMUM of 2 hours per week and work hard during training sessions.

•      try to keep good effort and attitude during training sessions.

•      maintain 70% attendance.

•      enter and attend compulsory competitions (selected by the coach), attend Time Trials and represent the club when selected.

If any of the above are not met then the swimmer and parent(s) will be reminded by the coach and given an agreed time to try and achieve them. If after this time the expectations are still not met then a place in the non-competitive Club Squad will be offered, subject to space.

Primary Squad swimmers should aim to:

•      achieve the standard of the ASA Preliminary Competitive Start Award.

•      develop competitive training skills such as starts, turns using the pace clock and lane discipline.

•      understand some of the rules and laws of competitive swimming.

•      achieve MIDDX County Championships qualifying times.

If a Primary Squad swimmer meets all of the following requirements, they may be considered to join the Junior Squad, subject to the Junior Coach’s decision. (If your name is put forward, it does not guarantee you a place.) If the coaches agree that a swimmer is not ready at that time, then they will spend more time preparing in the Primary Squad until they are ready.

For consideration a swimmer must:

•      be the minimum age of 9 years and the maximum of 11 years, subject to ability.

•      show a MINIMUM commitment of 3 training sessions per week with good effort and attitude maintained.

•      have maintained 70% attendance.

•      be able to perform all four strokes to an efficient standard with legal finishes.

•      be able to perform all turns with correct underwater transition on all strokes.

•      be able to complete a set of 16 x 50m on 1.10.

•      have achieved the standard of the Preliminary Competitive Start Award.

•      have achieved the standard of the National Plan for Teaching Swimming  stage 9.