Hertford Swimming Club visits Club La Santa

Posted: Tuesday April 8, 2008

This swimming club from the county of Hertfordshire and has approximately 140 members and is affiliated to ASA East Region . Of the 40 swimming clubs that exist in this county, they belong somewhere in the top 12. The 16 swimmers who are here are in between 10 and 15 years old. Everyone is here with their family, so that makes it a group of 49 people in total!

It is the 1st time they do a trip like this and the 1st time they have been here. The reason why they chose Club La Santa is because: ‘It’s the only place you can go to now. You cannot only swim here, but do other things as well. You don’t have that anywhere else. There is the 50 meter pool and some of my friends and other swim clubs I know have been here before.’ says Mr. Stephen Barber. He has been a coach at Hertford Swimming for 2 years now.

The week the club has been here, they have been training 4 hours a day; 2 hours in the morning from 9-11 and 2 hours in the evening from 5-7. In total they have 24 hours of training this week.

One training session consists of:

-800 m. warm up
-800 m. drill set
-2,000 – 3,000m. aerobic set
-800m swim down

They swim about 60,000 m. in the week. And that twice a day plus doing other sports as well during the day, like Badminton, Squash. Amazing for young kids as they are! There are several 12 year old girls who have swum 60,000 m. this week. They are definitely doing a good job!

The goal for this week was most of all team building. Then there were some special targets for some of them, to get them to a regional time to qualify for the regional championships.

Some of the swimmers have previously been county champions! And some are regional medalists in the past. The aim is to get a bit nearer to the regional championships and reach the qualifying times. 3 or 4 swimmers have already the qualifying time for the regional championships in June and coach Barber is expecting 3 or 4 more to get there as well. The distances these swimmers have to concentrate on are the 100m, 200m and 400m. freestyle and the 100m and 200m breaststroke.

Hertford Swimming is quite selective. You have to be 6 years old to join in and the oldest swimmers are 22/23. At the moment there is even a waiting list! They don’t have international swimmers, because if they were very good swimmers they would push them to bigger clubs, according to Coach Barber. There was one girl who became 2nd in the regions, which is a very good achievement!

The club might come back next year, because there are some swimmers who couldn’t come this year and they might want to experience the same thing the group now has experienced!

The coach: ‘I hope we’re coming back sometime, I think that it is great. And you have to be here, because in other places you don’t have much else to do during the day and the activity between the swimming sessions is good for the children and for the families who are coming with them. You don’t have anything else like this place in Europe, I guess.’

A long-term goal for the club is for the swimmers to go from the regional championships eventually to national championships. When everything goes well, hopefully 2 or 3 swimmers are going to be ready for that next year.