Skegness Freemasons’ donation helps to keep swim club afloat
Freemasons Scott Colbourne and Michael Robinson of Lumley Lodge have given £500 to Skegness Swim Team, which volunteers plan to use to help rebuild the club that’s been hard hit by the pandemic.
Efforts to teach swimming skills to children and teenagers between the ages of 7 and 18 have been severely hampered by a drop off in numbers due to the Covid Pandemic and the time the children spent away from the pool.
The club’s Helen Banham said it was funded from a monthly subscription from each swimmer to cover the cost of hiring Skegness Swimming Pool and insurance, but added: “Swimming is a vital life skill and one that has been recognised in your donation, which we’ll use in our efforts to keep the membership fees at an acceptable level, allowing a greater majority of children to swim with us, and to build our own skills to deliver the training.”
About 30 children are regular swimmers with the club. To join, they have to be able to swim 50m unaided in any stroke, with training every day except Wednesday and Saturday. Helen added: “Swimmers train according to ability and what they want in terms of a swimming career. This can be anything from an hour a week up to 14 hours in the pool, and our swimmers range from just starting on the swim journey to those that are competing at national level.
The Clubs aims are the following:
• Encouraging children to lead a healthy lifestyle and to enjoy a sport.
• Representing Skegness and the surrounding East Coast on a sporting level at county, Regional and National level.
• To give children the confidence to be good at something.
• Allows children who can swim improve on a valuable life skill, which could one day be used to save a life or be part of a career. Two of our swimmer work with the RNLI in the summer as beach lifeguards. The sea is a very dangerous place, even for the best swimmer. 2022 proved to be a difficult year in terms of recruiting Beach Lifeguards. You need t5o be a strong swimmer to take on this job. But if you are 16 and trained then, the financial rewards are good.
• Allows for all abilities and especially children with disabilities that cannot play high impact
sports e.g. Rugby
• Encourages children to develop a competitive nature, whilst having fun.
• We support and use the Magna Vitea Skegness pool, which helps with the sustainability
of a public facility, especially in winter.
• Allows children from other parts of Lincolnshire, which have been unsuccessful in obtaining a place at other swimming clubs, take part and develop skills.
• Allows children who are not naturally team players to be part of a team whilst achieving
personal goals.
• To enable children and adults to swimming locally, as in the past they have had to travel to
Louth, Boston, or Lincoln to be part of an Amateur Swimming Club.
• To mainly benefit the East Coast Community from children through to adults of all ages.
