ASA Volunteer of the Year Award - Results
12 Dec 2016
Head Coach – Chris Mayell receives Bronze Award in ASA Volunteer of the Year Category.The achievements of the aquatics community were celebrated at the annual ASA Aquatics Awards on 26thNovember 2016. The event was held at Birmingham University’s Great Hall. The Awards recognise the vast contribution of individuals and organisations from across all areas of the sport.
Chris was nominated for the ASA Volunteer of the Year Awards by the Committee and was awarded bronze on the evening.
Chris has been Head Coach of Rushden Swimming Club for four years and has managed to grow the club both in numbers and in performance. Our junior squad has grown to full capacity for the pool time permitted and Chris has introduced an Assistant head coach to run the junior team. Our juniors are growing from strength to strength; this year’s Leicester Diddy league gala saw our Junior team achieving 2nd in rounds 1 and 2 and smashing the 3rd round in first position. Chris now also runs our Diamond beginners swim school on a Monday evening, with the help of two senior swimming assistants, in order to bring younger children into the club and start their competitive swimming tuition as young as possible.
Chris has developed a strong workforce of poolside helpers to assist in teaching and coaching. He is very supportive of senior swimmers wishing to learn and gain experience in poolside helping and for students requiring voluntary experience towards their GCSE’s or D of E Award. All are provided with the opportunity to deliver training sets on a regular basis, guided in their instruction and coaching techniques and encouraged and supported in attending courses to gain further qualifications.
Chris has also encouraged more parents to become involved in the club, in coaching and committee roles. Seeing two new parents now qualified in Teaching Aquatics at Level 2. RSC are now able to provide a full coaching team for every training session and also manage to have two sessions running at the same time in two different pools.
Chris has introduced a mentoring system whereby senior swimmers become mentors for junior swimmers.
He has worked extremely hard in building relationships with other swimming clubs within the County in order to share resources and experiences and often integrating swimmers during training.
Chris is a very kind, considerate and generous man who’s only ask from all the hard work he puts into the club and swimmers’ development, is for the swimmers to work hard, do well and achieve results.
In May 2016, Rushden Swimming Club competed in the Sadie Murray Shield, County Gala. The club took on four other County clubs, and finished in a fantastic 1st place, taking the Sadie Murray Shield home for the first time since 2007.
51 swimmers in the club qualified for this year’s County Championships. Proving that hard work and dedication and good coaching pays off, the swimmers brought home 53 individual medals and a further ten top three placings for the relay teams - 9 Gold, 29 Silver and 25 Bronze. 34 swimmers qualified, during the Championships, from a total of 94 finals - a fantastic achievement. Also two of our girls were crowned Junior County Champions. The event also saw the club’s Regional qualifiers increase to a total of 20 swimmers.
In June of this year, Chris lead RSC to the County Presentation Gala at Corby International Pool. We achieved just under half 1stplace positions in the events overall and powered our way to beat four other County teams to 1st place, with a lead of 20 points.
Over the weekend of 30th April - 2nd May, Chris took 15 swimmers to the East Midland Regional Championships at Ponds Forge in Sheffield. The overall results were fantastic with many swimmers qualifying for finals and achieving 2ndand 3rd placings.
This year we were also able to enter Regional relay teams for both, boys and girls, 14/16 years freestyle and boys 14/16 years medley. The girls 14/16 yrs freestyle team finished a fantastic 6th out of 16.
Two of our younger swimmers also qualified for the Junior Regionals in Corby, with one qualifying for the final of the Girl’s 50m butterfly.
The following few paragraphs were written by one of our senior swimmers:
"Not only is Chris a coach to everyone as a whole at RSC, he is also a coach to individuals and ensures that everybody has equal opportunities in order to succeed. His presence so much of the time on poolside, is a massive factor as to why RSC has become the team it is now. The dedication that he has, is shown not only by him being at sessions but also by the amount of time that he spends away from the pool that not everyone notices. Because of the brilliant sets and sessions that he creates, it allows for all of us swimmers to experience quality training and reach our goals, which is one of the reasons we have become a greater club in general.
Although originally being a small club, Chris has allowed us to expand and broaden RSC’s horizons by increasing the size of our teams and squads and continuously finding events that allow us to progress to better levels. Although it has taken hard work over the years, as a club we are proud to say that we are now the 2nd most successful team in the County.
A couple of years ago, there were little to no Midland level swimmers, compared to now when we have progressed to a handful and then again to 20 swimmers. We have Chris’ dedication and faith in us to thank for this status. As well as bringing individuals to greater success over time, he has also overseen the club’s first Midland relays and maintained this for a long time. Not only this, he has also created more relays at this level which has created great success for individuals and also as collective groups.
This has created an undeniable family feel for so many of the swimmers which is unlikely to be broken. Because of the faith he has had to push swimmers (younger and older) to big levels, it has increased their mental strength and self-belief which is the reason RSC are creating great performers and will continue to do so.”
We are positive that, if asked, all of our swimmers would join in and praise Chris for his extremely hard work and dedication to the club and team. Chris winning this award would enable our swimmers, Coaches and parents to congratulate and thank Chris for everything he has done and intends to do going forwards for the swimmers. Often his health does suffer from the exertion of hours spent on poolside and lack of sleep, winning this award may make it a little easier to bear and we in turn, are hoping to support Chris by training our workforce up with qualifications to assist Chris to help make RSC a better, stronger team.