Swimming – What is your first thought when you hear the word swimming? Is it flashbacks to hours spent staring a straight black line? Is it an anxious response with unhappy memories of being out of your depth? Is it a celebration of a race won or the wonder of “What if” of a win that was so close and yet so far?

My very earliest memory is being at a swimming lesson and taken to the deep end. I remember being under the water and can picture the instructor’s legs just in front of me but I feel stuck under the water and I don’t know how to get back to the top. It was literally “sink or swim”. It is this memory that I am determined to avoid for young Lindfield swimmers!

From the first week of Term 4 all boys K-6 will be swimming in PE Lessons. For the K-2 boys this will look like stroke development and technical improvement in the lead up to the JP Swimming Carnival. For the primary boys there will be a greater focus on water safety and lifesaving skills, as well as the biathlon and some very popular waterpolo games. The time that the boys spend in the water is school is great, but is this enough?

There are so many long-term health benefits to swimming including cardiovascular endurance, muscle development, low-impact exercise and weight control; as well as the positive impacts of all exercise on mental health. None of this is new information though, so why the focus on swimming? Once the boys have mastered the basic strokes, do they need to participate in a structured swimming program?

YES! I would love to see every boy at Lindfield in a structured swimming program outside of school for 3 main reasons.

1 – Aquatic Confidence and Safety – The boys at Lindfield are privileged to be growing up in regions where many people have a backyard pool and the beach is accessible relatively easily. For many of our boys the beach and aquatic environments will increasingly be part of their social lives and confidence in a range of aquatic environments is crucial. Unfortunately we know that young boys and adolescents do not always make wise decisions, including around the water, and so it is crucial that boys are armed with the skills to protect themselves and to assist their mates if the situation ever arose.

2 – Aquatic Fitness – Swimming fitness is a unique type of fitness where the cardiovascular system is worked and strengthened, but also almost every major muscle is also used and strengthened by swimming regularly. Not all of our boys are going to be competitive swimmers and that is far from my aim, but all boys can be fitter and stronger by regularly pushing themselves in a structured swimming environment.

3 – Discipline and Commitment – For many of our boys, they will go through phases where swimming lessons or swimming squads feel like hard work. They may be frustrated waiting to move up to the next level of class, they may be sick of looking at the black line or they may not like getting in and out of the pool, particularly in the colder weather! Pushing through these times is the perfect exercise to teach lessons in discipline and commitment that are transferrable to all areas of life. By the end of primary school boys should be getting themselves ready for swimming and accept responsibility for not only attending the class or squad, but giving their best each time they hit the water.

Mr Ryan Moar (Director of Aquatics) and Ms Josephine Brown (Director of Learn to Swim) from Stanmore will be having an increased involvement at Lindfield from the September holiday break. There will be an intensive swimming program throughout the holidays and then swimming lessons and squads available from Term 4. This ensures that boys at Wyvern and Lindfield will be following the same programs and will feed into Stanmore swimming seamlessly in Year 7.

I look forward to seeing all of the boys ready to swim in Term 4.

Eliza Monaghan – Sports Co-ordinator