About the Club:

Backwell Swimming Club is a competitive swimming club that offers the opportunity for all members of the community to participate in the journey along the ASA’s long term athlete development plan for as long as their commitment remains, and to achieve a standard beyond that which the swimmers themselves believe to be possible.

 Our Teaching and Coaching groups:

Our club is organised so a swimmer can join as a beginner at the age of 5 and progress though the squads to competitive swimming - many of our swimmers compete well into their 20's. The majority of our swimmers though will be under 16.

LEARN TO SWIM:  To help children become confident in the water and improving their swimming skills. Weekly technique lessons following ASA Learn To Swim Pathway. 

MINNOWS: Our first club squad that swimmers can join after competing learn to swim stage 6. The sessions provides more structure to learning to train, developing skills and technique. Providing 2 hours of swimming per week. 

MARLINS: This is our next progression in the club, this squad has a focus on further developing skills and technique, with and extra hour available to them (3 hours per week). Swimmers in Marlins also get the opportunity to start to compete in team events. 

"FUTURE FISH": This is a 'stepping stone' session offered to our learn to swim stage 5 and 6 swimmers, with an aim to provide extra pool time to allow them to develop further and be prepared for the jump when joining our first club squad.

DEVELOPMENT SQUAD:  This squad provides up to 4 hours of training per week. Developing our swimmers technique and starting to develop racing skills further with more opportunities to compete in both team events and open meets. 

POTENTIAL SQUAD: Swimming in our potential squad provides swimmers with up to 5 hours of training per week. Training develops further, encouraging our swimmers to push themselves to get the best results during competition if that's the path they chose. 

PERFORMANCE SQUADOur swimmers are provided with further hours, up to 5 1/4 hours of training per week. Majority of swimmers will be competing at County level with some pushing further to reach Regional level. 

MASTERS: Our masters squad is aimed at swimmers above the age of 18 year, who want to continue to train within the club. Members of this squad are able to train up to 3 sessions a week; where some look at continuing to compete and others train to remain part of the community. 

LAND TRAINING: Our squads from Development up are offered an hour of land based training a week, with our head coach and land training coach. 

Running of the Club:

The club is affiliated to Somerset ASA and the club is structured around the guidance and recommendations of Swim England. We are also a member of the City of Bristol Network which offers a performance pathway for our high achieving swimmers. We are an accredited  "Swim MarkClub which is the quality standard for all swim clubs and requires a high level of professionalism across all aspects of the club. 

There is a committee running the club formed from parent helpers. Our key team members, though, are our coaching and teaching team comprising of a combination  of qualified volunteers, parent helpers and senior swimmers acting as "young volunteers". The club is entirely voluntary run and coached, we encourage parents to get involved as much as possible to help with the running of the club. 

Competitions and Galas: 

As a club we encourage our swimmers to take part in both team and individual events; we compete in 3 main gala competitions; The Arena League, The Cotswolds League and the Four seasons Novice Gala series. In addition, we target a number of Open meets throughout the year, including the Somerset County Championships and for some swimmers the South West Regional Championships.  We also run an annual club championships.

Young Volunteering Opportunities; as a club we take pride in providing opportunities to our swimmers from an age of 14yrs to start to develop their teaching and coaching skills alongside training themselves. Many of our swimmers take up a role as a young volunteer providing support to younger swimmers during their training sessions.

Within the club, we continue to look for new ways to improve the enjoyment and quality of training for our swimmers and we welcome all and any help we get towards this.