Amir reaches Swim England National championships due to Forest's swimming outreach programme
Our swimming outreach is called The Forest Swimming Performance Programme. This programme invites regional to national level swimmers currently attending state schools in Waltham Forest and Redbridge to top up their training by joining the Forest School Performance sessions during our Year 11-13 activities period.
This programme identifies a social economical divide in those children making it to elite level in swimming due to increasing cost of living and cost of pool hire for local swimming clubs due to the ongoing energy crisis. It is commonly known amongst the swim community that the majority of those who make it to Team GB programmes come from a private school background due to the specific facility needs within the sport. Most state school children who swim competitively do not get the access to the volume of pool time required to reach the highest level and if they do this often means training at 5am before school and up to 9pm after school due to busy public pool programmes. Whereas those with pools in their schools have much greater access to not only the required amount of training hours but also training times which are much more appropriate when trying to live a balanced study/training life as an athlete.
Since September we have had swimmers take advantage of our Performance Program from the following schools:
Heathcote
Higham’s Park
West Hatch
Wanstead High School
On Saturday 4th November one of those swimmers taking advantage of our programme, Amir competed at the London Regional Championships and made Swim England National qualification times in 50m Freestyle and 50m Breaststroke. This is his highest level of qualification to date and puts him in the country’s top 20 for his age. Congratulations to Amir!