I am writing to thank you for your ongoing commitment to our wonderful club, Ringwood Seals. As you know it is a small and friendly club and this means that most of the children know each other and have formed very good friendships, which is a delight to see.

With the summer already seeming a dim and distant past, we look forward to the home club championships this week as well as continuing competition with inter club galas

As time has progressed, many of our swimmers have moved through the lanes and are starting to join other swimmers at either the novice or league galas. They are learning new skills, improving their techniques and our coaches have seen an enhanced passion to win. You should be very proud of each and every one of them and, of course this is such wonderful reward for our teachers and coaches.

As you will be aware our club is organised and run by volunteers. Each of our teachers and coaches has daytime jobs and balance this with their family time as well as the club. They do this because they are very committed and love to see your children flourish and achieve so much. They do however, like anyone, feel the pressure from trying to keep this balanced life and I would like to try and remove some of this pressure.

With this in mind, I would like to seek your support. There are a couple of areas that will specifically help, the first of which is galas.

To organise a gala actually takes a lot of time, with the teachers having to identify a child, who is the right age and who can swim close to the competition set times for each race. We have enough children in the club to do this, but we need more parents to ensure they tick the sheets posted on the notice board for their child to attend. If your child is unable to attend, please put a cross against their name on the sheet. If you have ticked the sheet but for some reason cannot make it on the day, (perhaps due to illness), please call the number at the top of the sheet to inform the organising person as early as possible. You will appreciate that at galas the teachers have a lot of organising to do, so an early call will help the club to re-organise children into appropriate races. To find out more about galas and what the coaches and other parent volunteers do at them, please feel free to discuss with them in the viewing area upstairs or at poolside.

The second point is one of child safety. Please can we ask all parents that they ensure there child is supervised until they are inside and poolside. The teachers and coaches are not responsible for looking after your child anywhere else including other areas of the leisure centre or outside. If there are times when the children need to be collected early from swimming, we always ask them to get changed and then to sit on poolside until collected by their parent.

I would also like to thank you for your patience whilst we do not have use of the starting blocks (due to the crumbling nature of the fittings in the ground). We are looking to see if we can secure some pool time from Romsey and Totton to allow our younger swimmers, who have half achieved their Preliminary Competitive Start Award, to demonstrate competence and pass this award. If we are successful at securing a pool time, Kathy will put a notice on the board, advising of the date and time and which swimmers need to attend.

As mentioned, we are always looking for volunteers to help out at the various galas and events throughout the year and would appreciate your help. For further information of how you could contribute to the club, or, if there are any burning issues that you wish to discuss, please get in touch with me or any of the coaches poolside.

With kind regards

Dave Plested
Club Chairman