Swimming/Sporting Background/Achievements
I was born in Australia and swimming has been my passion since I was 7 years old. Like many people I learned to swim at about 4 years of age with my lessons becoming training from the age of 7. My primary school was very competitive at swimming and from 7 years old I was part of a relay team that won several gold medals at N.S.W. State Championships, breaking a state record in the process. I won several N.S.W. state medals and titles in the years that followed and moved to Calgary, Canada, at 13 where I continued my competitive swimming, under Graham Smith, World Record Holder and winner of 6 Commonwealth Gold medals and Deryk Snelling, British and Canadian Olympic coach. At 16 I was awarded an academic and a sport’s scholarship to attend the University of Calgary. Our swim team was very successful, and was Canadian National champions for 10 years in a row. Throughout much of my swimming career I have been privileged to train with World record holders, Commonwealth and Olympic champions. In 1994, I moved to Droitwich to be married and in January 1995, I was appointed Head Coach of WSC. At that time, the club was in Division 3 of the Arena League (called Speedo League back then). I was fortunate to have helping me, back then, Mark Stowe, who joined the club after he was transferred to Worcester with his job. Along with the other coaches, we successfully developed the team, progressing it through the divisions up to Division 1 where it is today as one of the strongest in the area. We also managed to quadruple the club’s County Championship’s medal tally in the process. I had to make the difficult decision to resign from my position as Head Coach in 2003 to focus on raising a family. As my children, Robert and Jenny grew up and with the ‘insider knowledge’ I had of how dedicated and proficient Margaret and Sheila were with the Learn-to-Swim program, I enrolled them with WSC for swim lessons. I was now experiencing life as a ‘swim’ parent, finding out the level of commitment and dedication needed to support 2 young swimmers. On a personal level, during this time, I also did a bit of swimming training myself and managed to win 7 gold, 2 silver and 1 bronze medal at British Masters’ Championships. I was pleased to be asked by Mark to help out on poolside again. I currently assist with the Junior County Squad as well as occasionally helping Pre-Comp 2. It has been a privilege to be associated with Worcester Swimming Club for the past 18 years.
Favourite stroke
To swim – Backstroke
To coach – Breastroke and Butterfly (as a club we’ve had lots of success with both)
Favourite training set
100 x 100 F/C or Formstroke
3 things you couldn’t do without
My tube of Vegemite, my Gorilla onesy and my sense of humour (with the Australian sporting performances recently!)
If you won the lottery what would you do?
Add the extra 17 metres to Sansome Walk pool to make it long course. And maybe have some more golf lessons too!! (no comments here please, Mark or Patrick!!)