Bishop's Stortford Swimming Club

Affiliated to Swim England East Region

Welcome

Bishop’s Stortford Swimming Club is one of the oldest competitive swimming clubs in Hertfordshire. Whilst we strive to be competitive we realise our responsibilities to encourage sport for all and this is reflected in a club structure which ranges from the Swim School, through to our competitive squads and Masters.

Bishop’s Stortford Swimming Club is a club that puts its swimmers first and with some 200 swimming members, we aim to provide an inclusive experience catering for those learning to swim, those starting out on their competitive swimming careers and to those striving to compete at Counties, Regionals and Nationals.

So if you’re looking for a new club, swimming lessons, a competitive club or simply coming back to swimming after a break, take a moment to look through our site and see what we can offer you.

Return to the Pool Newsletter

Here’s the Return to the Pool edition of our Babble newsletter. Slightly later than planned given we’ve been back in the water for over a month now, but we are pleased to be sharing the content with you.

DownloadNewsletter – Return to the Pool (2.7 MB)

We have some great articles from our regular contributors Paul Palmer and Coach Barry, along with exciting details about a new Swim England virtual competition called Level X.

When reading our fundraising section, please consider what you can do to help and keep an eye out for emails explaining our crowdfunder campaign launching soon. 

Happy reading, stay safe and stay connected.

Kirsty and Millie reach a high point

  • Kirsty
  • Millie

Two members of Bishop’s Stortford Swimming Club were recently selected for activities run by the England Swimming Talent team for top young athletes in England.

Kirsty Neill (13yrs) will be part of 430 13-14 year old swimmers attending the Swim England National Development Programme learning and engagement day.  The Covid adjusted day will contain a series of online workshops and dry land conditioning sessions, but unfortunately no pool time.

Having previously attended Swim England National Event camps, Millie Fields (16yrs) has been selected for the two year Swim England Diploma in Sporting Excellence (DiSE) run in partnership with Loughborough College.  This unique government funded level 3 BTEC aims to prepare high potential athletes to develop in their sport at an Elite level. Millie will join an illustrious list of course alumni including Adam Peaty and Rebecca Adlington.

These selections are a high point to a season that ended in disappointment when major championships were cancelled due to the lockdown.  Kirsty should have been competing at the Scottish National Age Group Championships and Millie should have been at the British Swimming Championships for the first time in April and they were both also on track for qualification for National Summer meets.  Congratulations to them both and we look forward to reporting on their progress when we return to the water.

Squad structure update

Pools are gradually re-opening, and our coaching team is preparing for our return to the water.  We are a club that is changing year on year and to reflect those changes in size and competitiveness our head coach Benoit has reviewed the existing structure and made some updates that will take effect as soon as we start training.  

There are more details on the Squad Structure page.

Please review the PDF download that contains the plan of the new structure and the updated individual criteria for each squad.  Although many of the squad names remain the same, the entry criteria may have changed so please take your child’s year of birth and consider all squads for which they could be eligible.  For example, a swimmer born in 2006 could be in Cadets, Juniors, Minimes or Elites.  

DownloadSquad Structure and Criteria 2020-2021 (163.8 KB)

Movement between squads will be based on age (year of birth), entry criteria (where appropriate) and attendance during the active part of the 2019-2020 season and will be communicated to individual swimmers prior to us starting training.  Swimmers eligible for more than one squad may decide not to become part of a squad and will therefore be directed to a different squad according to their motivations.

Please direct any questions towards Benoit (BSSC Head Coach).

Learn to Swim

Bishop’s Stortford Swimming Club’s Learn to Swim programme provides high quality swimming lessons based on the ASA Learn to Swim Framework.  Our Learn to Swim lessons have some of the lowest teacher pupil ratio’s in the area with a maximum of 8 swimmers per lesson.

Lessons are held in two locations, Bishops Stortford College Pool on Sundays between 3:00pm and 6:00pm and Leventhorpe School Pool on Mondays and Wednesday between 4:15pm and 5:15pm.

For further information please visit our Learn to Swim pages or alternatively you can contact us by email.