The best swimmers from the Dolphin and Sundays Well clubs to train together in a Cork City Squad
Swim Ireland High Performance Centres have been organised in Dublin, Limerick and Galway and have led to great improvements in competitive swimming. As a prelude to setting up a High Performance Centre in Cork, Peter Banks, the Swim Ireland High Performance Director, has asked the Dolphin and Sundays Well swimming clubs to set up a Cork City Squad (CCS), as an addition to training at club level. Training programmes in the two clubs have recently been reorganised and improved under Carol Cashel and Billy Campion. Membership of this squad has been decided by the clubs coaching staffs’ based on age-related qualifying times, assuming full participation in club training and competition programmes. Presently fifteen swimmers have qualified for the squad and training began with a two day camp on December 30 and 31.
In early January a weekly two hour CCS session will be initiated to augment club training. This will run throughout the first half of 2012, at which time it is hoped to include swimmers from nearby areas like Fermoy and Mallow, and, with Swim Ireland support, to set up a new High Performance Centre. This is all part of an effort to make Cork swimmers as good as those in any other part of the country and ultimately to improve Irish competitive swimming at International level.
Tom Cross, ASA Coach
Coaching Coordinator, Cork City Squad