Leadership and Personal Development Opportunities for Senior Athletes

Swim Rotorua have recently introduced a policy to provide leadership and personal development opportunities for our athletes who are 14 years and older. We have already introduced our Rocket Teams for Race Nights and other club events. Through this programme, we will develop the leaderships skills of our Team Leaders and other senior athletes. In addition we have introduced the following initiatives:

1. Swimming NZ Swim Teachers' Award.

Students 16 years and over who have a suitable level of maturity, responsibility and communication skills might want to consider enrolling for this course with Swimming NZ. Courses are regularly run in Rotorua, and provide 43 NCEA Level 3 credits on completion. This opportunity is open to those in all squads, but please discuss it with your coach or the Head Coach, Alastair Johnson. For suitable candidates  Swim Rotorua will provide encouragement, supervision and opportunities to undertake the  volunteer hours necessary through the junior programme, holiday programmes,  Owhata Wai Swim programme and possibly in conjunction with swim2XL. We also have a Swimming NZ qualified Evidence Gatherer for the course. This enables our swimmers to gain a qualification and work experience, and may lead to paid coaching/swim teaching opportunities. Two members of the current Performance squad have successfully completed this course, David & James, & in previous years, Katlin Donnelly, Jack Weston, Tiana Hill & William Spear. We look forward to others coming on board.

2. Volunteer Assistant-coaching opportunities

We may be able to provide some  14- 15 year olds with some Assistant- coaching practise over the holidays or possibly with the Wai Swim programme which we run at Owhata School. If you are interested, please contact Alastair Johnson.

4. Volunteer work for the Duke of Edinburgh Awards

As part of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards students need to do 3-6 months (and for Gold possibly 12 months) volunteer work of 1 -2 hours per week. Swim Rotorua may have some opportunities for students to complete volunteer work with the club eg maintenance, cleaning, administration and possibly some assistant coaching work. If you are interested in this, please contact Claire Baylis in the first instance cbaylis@xtra.co.nz