Chairman’s Report

2008/2009

8^th October

Edenbridge Leisure Centre

I would firstly like to thank the Committee, Coaches and Volunteers for their hard work this year, without which there would be no Club. A special thank you to: Colin Weeks, who is responsible for the Club spreadsheet which is now part of Piranha life; Andrew Fendt who amongst other things has designed and built the Club website www.edenbridgepiranhas.org.uk; Jonathan Ham who has produced the Club newsletter this will be being published monthly on the website anything that you feel you might want to share or add must be with Jonathan before the last 5 days of the month; Lisette Wade is hanging up her boots, I just hope we have someone to fill them!!!! After 10 years of service James Blair has also decided to step down; thank you for all your help and guidance, James.

Edenbridge Piranhas has grown in stature again this year with considerable gala and individual success. To date Piranhas have won four galas which is a fantastic effort. The individual improvement in the swimmers has been impressive. Every set of times I see there is a plethora of PBs and CRs, which is down to the pure dedication of the swimmers.

Piranhas are a relatively young Club that is building foundations from solid roots and as I have expressed in the past, Piranhas is about the children and how far they want to take it. We are very much on a learning curve and I think it is very encouraging to see the Club and the swimmers growing together.

The results speak for themselves; this is only derived from the dedication of the children. We have increased pool time this year and it is my intention to extend this further, which will allow us to reduce swimmers in each lane. It is also my intention to introduce land side training for the senior squad. We will offer a 30 minute dry session prior to the water session, unfortunately there is an age restriction on this due to insurance complications.

Edenbridge Piranhas website is going to be the way we want to converse I want to encourage more people to use it. Andrew currently updates it regularly and is very open for further input into the site. I hope many of you have seen the recent gala results and a list of PBs.

As a Club we need to address where our objectives lie and what we are working towards. The swimmers are what the Club is about and this year I have some new ideas and concepts that I want to put in place. Watch the website for more updates. It is my intention to keep the children abreast of all new ideas but also to provide individual goals, We have recently started to time children this data is going into books and they will be able to see there own improvement and set there own goals. It is important make sure that every swimmer is getting something out of the Club, I’m not perfect and a little jaded around the edges I do care and if you feel that your child is missing out on something tell me I cannot act on something that I know nothing about.

This year I hope that the Committee wil get your support keeping everyone happy is a very difficult task and please remember everyone does this job for free because they care about the Club. I want to reduce poolside banta and if there are issues which there will be can I ask people to put there thoughts in writing and I will personally make sure you receive a reply. The Committee will meet regularly and will take action where and when it is appropriate. One last note Subs please can we make sure these are paid on time the Club runs on a shoe string and without subs we cannot pay bills. I will be adding a penalty fine to late payers in the future.

I look forward to a success year ahead.

 Paul.