Wigan Swimming Club is committed to developing all swimmers into the competitive arena of swimming. The club achieves this by entering a number of team events within the swimming associations that cater for varying standards of swimmers. This then gives the swimmers the experience so as to move onto individual competition in Open events with support from the club at poolside.
How the team is selected
One of the things the club is asked is why their child is swimming in a particular event or not been selected. The first thing to know is that particularly in team events age is calculated to dates specific to that League. For instance the Bolton and District Mini League and Swim Development Gala is date on day of competition, but the Bolton and District Inter club is age on the 31st December, and this date also applies to to the National Arena League. Central Lancashire events such as the Junior Jubilee league is the 31st October.
The second thing the clubs look at what is the level of that league. The club will select a team that is competitive at that league and also include newer swimmers to competitions by doing this.
The Swim Development Gala and early rounds of the Bolton and District Mini League are used to assess swimmers and allow all swimmers to compete for the club. The club would class the teams selected for these galas to be the Wigan “B” team. All club swimmers will represent the club at this level. Swimmers would be expected to train hard in an attempt to swim for the club A team. All club swimmers are included in selection processes for the A team but the fastest swimmers would be selected for this team where available.
The competitions that the A team will be selected for is the semi finals and finals of the Mini League, the Inter Club League and the National Arena League.
In the competitions swimmers may be asked to swim up in age groups or swim events that may be the swimmers weakest event. When this is done the club makes the selection in the best interests of the team and takes into account the swimmers ability. The club believes it has the strongest swim squad in the borough and part of the development of the swimmers can be swimming against older swimmers as in open competitions you may well have to swim against older swimmers and we find the swimmers who the club select are competitive at the event due to the best coaches in the borough.
The club also attempts to select swimmers from the same event but on occasions this cannot be achieved and therefore some of the families members may not be selected but in these instances we would hope the family members would attend and act as reserves when swimmers fail to turn up.
Failure to attend galas when selected and not informing the team manager of your unavailability will be taken into account on future selections.
If you have any further questions please contact the club and we will explain the rationale for selection. If you feel you have not been selected and want to represent the club competitively again please contact us.
At team galas it is expected that all swimmers must either stay on poolside or return to poolside once they are changed for the end of the gala. This not only shows respect for swimmers in their team but for the opposing teams also.
Once that gala is over and the scores are collated we, as a team do the 3 cheers to congratulate the swimmers on the opposing teams for their competition.
Some of the galas run on quite late and a few people can’t stay until the very end, the Coaches and Team Managers need to be made aware of this before the start of the gala.