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• 2015 Swimming Wellington's Long Course Summer Champs; Friday 16 January - Monday 19 January 2015
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Being a Pirate Parent

Being a Pirate Parent

Swimming is still mainly a voluntary sport and so swimmers rely enormously on the goodwill of volunteers, in particular their parents, for the sport to operate successfully.  Swimming NZ have a great little “Parents’ Handbook” that explains what it’s all about for the uninitiated at

There are two main types of volunteer roles and we really need everyone to be involved in both:

·         official roles at swim meets; and

·         other roles to do with running our club.

Official roles

Just as Steve is keen for all swimmers to progress through the squads: racking up qualifying times for increasing distances by swimming a certain number of meets each season, parents need to rack up experience and qualifications by running the meets in which their kids swim.

Squad	Swimmer focus (Coaches)	Parent focus (Club)
Stingrays	25m then 50m times Pirates meets	Qualify as Timekeeper General meet & camp duties
Electric Eels	100m then 200m times Pirates meets Club League meets	Everyone should be a qualified timekeeper Qualify as IOT Meet, camp & team management
Seahawks	Signature & Wellington-level  meets + the above All times to 400m	Everyone should be a qualified IOT All the above
Hammerheads & Tigersharks	Coach-directed. Regional & national level meets + the above	Training new officials & volunteers Officiating Supporting camps and senior squad trips & activities

As a rule of thumb, you should expect to help at all the meets in which your kids swim and maybe one or two where they don’t. Some of the jobs are not technical and can be done by anyone: for example carrying food to other volunteers, making announcements, cooking sausages and so on.

If you want to talk about how your swimmer is going, email Club Coach Axel Levine and he’ll get back to you.

When you enter your child for a swim meet you are expected to volunteer at the meet. We also need parents to help with one-off projects such as running bus trips outside Wellington, head-to-head meets against other clubs and so on. These projects are particularly suitable for people who travel or can’t commit to regular responsibilities.

Other roles to help running our club

Beyond the Committee and club officers  http://www.karoripirates.org.nz/committee/ there are all sorts of other jobs that simply make for a happy, well informed club:

·         contributing news and photos both on the notice board and through our Facebook page ,

·         writing a newsletter,

·         fundraising,

·         developing our Internet site,

·         promoting the club in the media,

·         coordinating uniforms,

·         and so on…

The club has now got to the size where it’s difficult to keep track of the skills and capability of all the parents of our swimmers. It would be really helpful if people can proactively suggest where they have skills which they could use to support these or any other roles that seem sensible.