The article below appeared in Bill Lothian’s Community Sports page in the Edinburgh Evenings News on 24th December.

Volunteers play a key role in swimming. Without their dedication, many events would not be possible. As a club, we simply couldn’t function without our parent volunteers and officials.

There are three main areas where we need support – poolside, fundraising and club management.

Poolside: Swim meets are obviously an essential part of the sport of swimming. They are enjoyable for the swimmers and crucially help them to gain times to allow them to qualify for District and National events, they also provide valuable experience of racing as well as being an important source of funds for all swimming clubs.

Every meet our swimmers attend is run entirely with volunteers. There are a variety of opportunities for you to get involved at meets throughout the season.  As a club we are required to provide officials at a variety of meets – internal, club and external. To give you an idea of how many people are needed – we need around 20 for a time trial, and many more for our own meets.

Fundraising:  We are very keen to get a balance between social activities and fundraising activities, but given that our annual outgoings are greater than our income, it’s really important that we maximise our efforts to make sure that we can continue to keep training costs at a reasonable level.

We have bag packing dates, along with bake sales and a quiz night coming up, and I would encourage you all to support these events in any way you can.

In addition we also need some volunteers to help co-ordinate our fundraising, identifying opportunities for events and applying for grants or other funding.

Club management: The management of the club is overseen by the committee which is made up entirely of volunteers.  Anyone is welcome to get involved.

So, as you can see in order for the club to be sustainable, we require everyone to get involved to support the club. Quite frankly, without this volunteer support our club could not exist.

Because we need so many people to help, it is really important that everyone gets involved.  We all have busy lives and it can be difficult to spare the time, but the more people that give their time and support our events, the lighter the burden is on us all.  It also allows us to provide better support to our swimmers both on poolside and through fundraising. And don’t forget there are benefits for you too – a poolside view of the swimming, lunch if you stay all day, a free water bottle, access to free Scottish Swimming training, the list goes on!

We are asking all families to commit to volunteering to help the club in some way this season, by becoming an official, helping at meets, joining the fundraising team, taking photographs for us, or if you have any other skills that you feel would be useful.  And this isn’t restricted to the adults, there are lots of opportunities for our young people too.

Please email me at president@swimhearts.com to let me know how you can help or to find out more.

There was a great turnout for this year’s summer barbecue at Cramond beach on Sunday 18th August. Luckily the weather was mostly kind – windy but the rain held out until we had all been fed.

Rob Carruthers was the barbecue king again, assisted by Mike McGill. There were enough burgers, sausages, veggie burgers and veggie sausages to feed an army – or a group of hungry swimmers.

The tide was out long enough for a group of swimmers to walk out to Cramond island and back.  They made it back in time to queue up for burgers and sausages.

Thanks to everyone who came, a great turnout. The kids finished off the day with a game of rounders while we all sheltered under the gazebo!

A group of swimmers and parents (and Corrie the dog) set off up Arthur’s Seat on Sunday 16th June. It made a nice change from sitting in a hot swimming pool. We took the hard route up to near the summit at which point the parents stopped for a rest while the kids ran to the top.

After all the hard work and fresh air we made our way to Dynamic Earth for well earned coffee, muffins (and chicken and chips for one unnamed swimmer!).

All agreed it was a good start to the day and would be good to do again – hope to see more of you there next time.

Thanks to everyone who helped at the bake sale at Drumbrae on Saturday 30th March.  We raised a whopping £180.17.

Girls 14-16 800m relay Scottish age group champions

After a fantastic five days of racing at Tollcross, Hearts achieved an exceptional fourth place in the top club points.  Congratulations to all the swimmers and coaches who were part of this year’s meet, and thanks to Elinor Crofts and Carol Macinnes for representing the club as officials.  It was great to see many of our swimmers achieving PBs and podium successes, and it was especially enjoyable to watch our relay teams working together for the club.

Girls 11-13 relay silver medallists

Full results are on the results page.

We have a few changes to the training schedule during April / Easter Holidays. See the full training schedule here.

Changes are being made due to the following:

• Ainslie Park closed during w/c 8th April
• Forrester not available to us 1800-1900 during w/c 8th April
• Coach availability
• Anticipated reduced swimmer attendance during holidays
• British Champs taking place in Glasgow 16th-21st April and Scottish Masters taking place at RCP 19th/20th April

The changes for w/c 25th March (due to Scottish National Age Groups taking place) can be found in the email below and in the attachment.

Changes for w/c 1st April; w/c 8th April and w/c 15th April can be found below / in the attachment:

• w/c 1st April
  • Monday 1st April
    • ELITE / FaST 2 / FaST 1 / TaSK 3 – 0600-0730 in RCP main pool – coached by Angus (not for those attending SNAGs)
  • Wednesday 3rd April
    • FaST 1 Ainslie Park session cancelled
    • FaST 1 join TaSK 3 at Forrester 1900-2030 instead
• w/c 8th April
  • Monday 8th April
    • TaSK 1 / TaSK 2 – 1900-2000 at Forrester
    • FaST 2 / FaST 1 / SwiFT – 2000-2130 at Forrester
  • Wednesday 10th April
    • TaSK 1 / TaSK 2 – 1900-2000 at Forrester
    • FaST 1 / TaSK 3 / SwiFT – 2000-2130 at Forrester
  • Thursday 11th April
    • No Ainslie Park sessions
  • Friday 12th April
    • FaST 2 included in ELITE AM & PM sessions
    • TaSK 1 / TaSK 2 – 1900-2000 at Forrester
    • FaST 1 / TaSK 3 / SwiFT – 2000-2130 at Forrester
• w/c 15th April
  • Normal week for most – but there may need to be a few small changes for ELITE due to British Champs taking place (tbc).
  • Saturday 20th April
    • No ELITE 0600-0800 RCP session due to Scottish Masters taking place at RCP.
• w/c 22nd April
  • This will also be a normal training week – including Monday 22nd (Easter Monday)

With the Scottish National Age Group Championships taking place next week we have a few changes to the training schedule during w/c Monday 25th March.

Please see below for the changes to the schedule or find week 33 schedule here:

• Monday 25th March
  • ELITE – 0600-0730 at RCP
  • FaST 2 / FaST 1 / TaSK 3 – 0600-0730 at RCP (as normal)
  • All Forrester PM sessions as normal
• Tuesday 26th March
  • ELITE / FaST 2 – 1730-1900 at Drumbrae
  • FaST 1 / TaSK 3 – RCP session as normal
• Wednesday 27th March
  • ELITE / FaST 2 – 0530-0730 RCP session cancelled
  • ELITE / FaST 2 / FaST 1 – 1800-2000 at RCP (coached by Jill)
  • FaST 1 1715-1900 Ainslie Park session cancelled (replaced by above session)
  • All Forrester PM sessions as normal
• Thursday 28th March
  • ELITE – 1700-1900 Ainslie Park session cancelled
  • FaST 2 / FaST 1 – 1800-1850 land / 1900-2030 Ainslie Park session as normal – coached by Jill (ELITE are welcome by request)
• Friday 29th March
  • ELITE – 0530-0730 RCP session cancelled
  • ELITE – Drumbrae PM session cancelled
  • All Forrester PM sessions as normal
• Saturday 30th March
  • ELITE – 0600-0800 RCP session cancelled
• Sunday 31st March
  • FaST 2 / FaST 1 – RCP session cancelled
  • FaST 2 / FaST 1 / TaSK 3 – 1600-1650 land / 1700-1830 swim at Drumbrae (coached by Angus)
  • Other Drumbrae sessions as normal

There will be other changes throughout the first three weeks of April (including the school holidays) and these will be communicated very shortly. However, please note the following that are happening w/c Monday 1st April:

• Monday 1st April
  • ELITE / FaST 2 / FaST 1 / TaSK 3 – 0600-0730 in RCP main pool – coached by Angus (not for those attending SNAGs)
• Wednesday 3rd April
  • FaST 1 Ainslie Park session cancelled
  • FaST 1 join TaSK 3 at Forrester 1900-2030 instead

Further details regarding w/c Monday 1st April, w/c Monday 8th April and w/c Monday 15th April will be issued shortly – but there will only be small changes during this period.

This weekend, some of our swimmers took part in kit carrying at the Edinburgh International Swim Meet at the Royal Commonwealth Pool. As well as watching some of our own Hearts swimmers, they got a poolside view of top athletes such as Adam Peaty, Ross Murdoch, James Wilby, Hannah Miley and Aimee Wilmot to name a few.

During the 50m breaststroke ‘skins’ event, Olympic champion, Adam Peaty paused to ‘high five’ the kit carriers who were cheering him on.

At the end of the weekend, Adam, Ross and James happily chatted and took the time to sign autographs. Adam also answered a few questions.
• How many hours a week do you train? ‘about 30’
• Do you have any pre-competition routines? ‘I like to do lots of gym work before a big competition’
• Do your team mates make training more fun? ‘yes, I enjoy a bit of good competition’
• What made you decide to be a swimmer? ‘I enjoyed it and it’s important to do what you love’
• Do you ever forget to set the alarm for morning training? ‘yes, sometimes!’

Adam, Ross and James happily posed for a photo and thanked all our kit carriers.

Kirsty Funnell (Fast 1)

There were also great performances from some of our swimmers from FaST2 and Elite over the weekend with Holly McGill, Rowan Saunders, Ellie Reilly and Emma Russell making finals. President Helen Reilly was on marshalling duties all weekend and Stuart Russell was transportation manager, taking top swimmers between airport, hotel and pool all weekend.

Full results of our swimmers can be found on the results page.

Sunday 17th March

• RCP session cancelled due to Edinburgh International
• FaST 1 moved to Drumbrae for a joint session with TaSK 3 – 1600-1650 land / 1700-1830 swim

Sunday 24th March we are moving the TaSK 3 session to the RCP on that day:

• 1700-1730 land / 1730-1930 pool