It’s been an incredible year here at Swimsound and last year our amazing advanced swimmers took part in a sponsored swim for Zoe’s Place Baby Hospice.
Over the last few weeks, we have seen an incredible swell of support throughout our community for Zoe’s Place. A scouse born charity focused on providing end-of-life care for terminally ill children and bereavement support for their families. They urgently appealed for £6.5 million to maintain their base in West Derby. At Swimsound, our community is at the heart of all we do, so we knew we had to get involved.
We set our swim sights high: a long-distance swim equalling the length of the channel: 21 miles, with our swimmers each completing a ¼ or ½ mile swim. To say they smashed it would be an understatement! After amazing numbers of our dedicated swimmers showed up at Broadgreen and St Edward’s, they managed to swim an incredible 23 miles, and raised a massive £3600!
We kicked our fundraising efforts off with a practice session the week before. Our experienced team of coaches guiding swimmers through pacing, stamina, and technique tips for the long-distance swim. In addition to being a great charity event, this was a fantastic opportunity for our swimmers to test their long-distance skills. Swimming sustained distances improves cardiovascular endurance and builds stamina. We passed out fundraising forms, and appealed to our incredible Swimsound families to come down and join in.
On Wednesday, after a great evening of swimming lessons, our advanced swimmers prepared to start their swim. Our coaches, prepped with pen and paper, were ready to support, encourage and count their lengths. With invaluable support from family on poolside, every single swimmer completed their practice swims, all swimming between 800m and 1250m! We were all very touched by the amazing supportive energy on poolside at Broadgreen, and many trophies and certificates later, we had kicked off this fundraising event with a bang.
Incredible numbers of swimmers from across our weekend sessions arrived at St Edward’s on Friday, filling the pool with anticipatory energy and excitement. Over 30 swimmers all filed into their lanes, and after a quick warm up, were ready to close off the remaining miles over the channel. As all of your incredible donations began to pour in, these swimmers were gearing up to smash our goal out of the water. Over an hour, our swimmers covered over 25,000m, swimming incredibly and persevering over the longest distance many of them have ever swam. One of the most incredible things was the individual perseverance each swimmer had; all choosing to continue going after reaching their personal 400m target, in order to ensure we hit our goal. Medals were passed out, and our swimmers received a very well-rewarded round of applause.
The kindness and generosity shown by our advanced swimmers is indicative of the importance of Zoe’s Place, and the power of our local community to band together and raise money for those who need it the most.
Swimsound have completed all fundraising and passed it on to Zoe’s Place. Seeing our swim school come together and raise such an incredible sum of money in a short space of time to help others is one of the best things we’ve ever done. We cannot thank you all enough for the support, and we look forward to doing more charity swims in the future.
