SWIMMING: A full count of 24 youngsters are to be invited to swim in the next stage of Ipswich's Active Sport initiative. Every child who swam in the district's first festival on Sunday is now due to be officially asked to attend a four-day camp.
By Debbie Watson
SWIMMING
A FULL count of 24 youngsters are to be invited to swim in the next stage of Ipswich's Active Sport initiative.
Every child who swam in the district's first festival on Sunday is now due to be officially asked to attend a four-day camp.
The Active Sport initiative typically asks just some of the young festival swimmers to participate in stage two. However, coaches judged all the selected youngsters to be potential competitive talents for the future.
At the weekend's session – hosted by Crown Pools – the children were put through their paces with mock training sessions, land-training, as well as fun races to complete the event.
Active Sport swimming development officer for Suffolk, Tracy Brownlow, said: "The session was a great success for Ipswich and, in particular, a great credit to Ipswich Swimming Club because of all the hard work and time that was put in by volunteers.
"Of our 24 swimmers we had just four youngsters who already come from clubs and the rest were taken from schools swimming groups or other regular classes.
"That goes to prove to us that there is a lot of very impressive swimming talent out there which could be utilised."
Active Sport's initiative involves several stages of introducing youngsters to sports like swimming.
It hopes to encourage children to go into clubs – and potentially competition – where they might not otherwise have done.
Ipswich Swimming Club coach Carol Jellings assessed individuals at the Ipswich event. Her experience with swimmers like Karen Pickering makes her well placed to pass judgement on up and coming talent.
The Ipswich swimming camp will now take place in January.
Meanwhile, a number of other camps are already taking place this week across Suffolk.
Babergh, Waveney, Leiston and Mildenhall are among the districts which are using half term to put youngsters through their paces in the second stage of the Active Sport initiative for Suffolk.
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