You may have read in a previous email that we have shown Andrew Percy MP and leader of North Lincolnshire Council, Rob Waltham MBE, a presentation of our River Ancholme Improvement Project.
We are please to announce that this presentation is now available for you to download. The River Ancholme Improvement Project.
is part of our Club Development Plan passed by the members at the AGM in 2016. The Sport England grant for the eight marathon boats we saw on Saturday is the first part of the plan to come to fruition.
This presentation has taken a long time to prepare, with us getting two quotes for almost every section, but nothing you will read in the presentation is cast in stone and therefore is subject to change or revision. No doubt some of you will have other ideas or suggestions and we can have further discussions when funding is secured.
We are pleased to say that both Andrew and Rob were very impressed with our plans, and as Andrew said in his Instagram post “We have both committed to help support their growth plans”. This is very encouraging, but of course no funding is secured as yet. You will see in the presentation that we have identified several possible benefactors and some early talks with them have begun. Please respect the confidential nature of these talks.
If anyone has any other contacts or ideas as to how to raise the significant amount we need, please contact our fundraising officer Zandra Holden, at fundraising@gscc-online.com.
Details of how to download the presentation can be found at the end of this email.
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So how did this all start…….At our AGM in 2016 the members passed a motion to implement a Club Development Plan to move the club forward in a new direction. The reason behind this was in the recent years prior to 2016 the clubs activities had been predominantly British Canoeing Star and Paddlepower awards, white water recreational paddling and canoe polo. Due to changes in law regarding culpabiltiy and in coaching levels and ratios on whitewater, it became more difficult to run as many whitewater trips as we used to. This resulted in members (especially the younger ones) getting bored with just doing awards every week, so we would lose a lot of members every year.
We also needed to find ways to attract more people of all ages (though our younger members of the community are always a priority target) to want to start kayaking and canoeing
The Club Development Plan set to address these problem by offering our new and existing members coaching in the competitive disciplines of sprint racing. marathon racing, slalom racing and canoe polo. To do this effectively you need three elements;
Qualified coaches
The correct equipment
A suitable venue to train in
The club has started addressing the first by paying to get six of our coaches trained during August 2016 to teach marathon racing . The second we have started addressing with the Sport England grant that has enabled us to purchase the eight marathon boats you may have seen on Saturday, and the third will be addressed by the implementation of the River Development Plan.
Under the guidance and drive of our coaching officer, Neil Marley, we embarked on a campaign during 2017 to get paddlers racing in marathon and slalom, using the fleet of old boats that we currently have. We started specific discipline training on Tuesday evenings in the summer after the regular “awards” session and we stared winter fitness training for the first time during the winter of 2016/17 to increase the fitness and stamina of our paddlers.
The problems with old boats was more noticeable with marathon than slalom as our adult marathon boats are quite unstable and put beginners off, so we decided that marathon would be the first discipline to get new boats if we could secure the funds.
In the meantime, we have had a very successful year in 2017 with our old boats. We had several promotions in the slalom leagues and in marathon we won the Yorkshire Region Hasler league, which qualified us to paddle in the finals in London. This was despite the over 12’s to adults age range having to struggle with our old boats with them being too unstable, resulting in some paddlers using slow but stable general purpose boats. We still had successes in division 9, getting some paddlers promoted to division 8.
There is still much to do. We need similar amounts as we got for the marathon boats to upgrade our slalom and polo boats (£10K at a time), and as you will see in the presentation, the river improvement plan will cost a substantial amount of money.
You can download our River Ancholme Improvement Project from the Downloads button on the bottom menu bar of our website, or by clicking here.
