Doncaster Dartes coaches are on a roll at the moment with their selections for the development programs! We're beyond excited to announce that Coach Rob has been selected as the Skills Coach for the National Age Group Development Programme for 2022-2023. Swim England Swimming Talent Team organise a series of development programmes that provide a pathway to support young swimmers and the ‘team behind the performer’ in their quest to achieve senior international podium success. Throughout the 22/23 season Coach Rob will play a leading role in the supporting swimmers...

Beverley Barracudas hosted their 2nd County Qualifier after their very successful meet last year. This meet was designed to give swimmers a chance of getting some last minute county times for the Yorkshire Champions only a short while away. An afternoon start for a double session gala can always be tricky but it didn’t seem to phase our young swimmers this weekend. Considering most only races last weekend at Doncaster Dartes September Sprints we still saw an impressive amount of PB’s along with County & Regional times achieved. Over the...

After a 3 year absence due to covid, today saw the North East / North West 2022 Regional Para Swimming Championships take place at the Sunderland Aquatics Centre. We think it’s fair to say that Lucas went and smashed his first regional event this weekend with all events but one he got a new PB. See below for the list of events and placings: Men 100m Freestyle - 1st Place Men 200m Freestyle - 2nd Place Men 50m Backstroke - 4th Place Men 100m Backstroke - 2nd Place Men 50m...

We’re super excited to announce that Coach Emma has been selected to be the Skills Coach on the Swim England North East Region Para Swimming sessions for 2022. The training sessions form part of the Swim England Para-Swimming Talent Programme and will provide an opportunity for swimmers to develop their technical, tactical, physical and psychological skills with others of a similar age and ability from across the region. The sessions will also provide an opportunity for swimmers to work with different coaches and to train in different environments. Coach Emma...

A fantastic day of swimming was had at our September Sprints this weekend. Sunday saw our athletes swim a total of 132 races and the results were nothing short of spectacular. 16% First time racing 58% PB's 24% Speeding Tickets 27% Medalled Well done to you all, to think you’ve only been back in the pool 6 days ago, you all did amazing and should be so proud of yourselves. We’ve said it over and over, Doncaster Dartes could not operate without it’s Volunteers. We asked our Chair, Gail, to...

Doncaster Dartes would like to express its heartfelt condolences to the Royal Family on the passing of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II Following the sad news of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, all sessions will be cancelled tomorrow, Friday 9th September.

Following on from yesterday's announcement of National Development Programme selections, we found it odd that Jenson Owen (Edl) hadn't been selected too. Now we understand why. At British Nationals, Swim England invited a number of coaches to a briefing to detail a new project. The background being that as a nation, we are currently underperforming at 400m, 800m, and 1500m events and something needs to be done to change that. The Swim England Distance Initiative is the project put in place to deliver those changes. The plan is to select...

For 2022, Nationals was split in half by the Commonwealth Games. First up was British Summer Champs, following a week later was Swim England's National Summer meet. Conveniently for us, both took place at Ponds Forge, Sheffield. Unfortunately it also stretched the season a week or so into August for those competing. Athletes for either meet were invited based on their performances during a three month qualifying window. A national ranking in the top 50ish being the grade required. We had ten qualify for the pool events and another for...

It's been a long, hard slog to get to the end of the 2022 season. Emerging from a pandemic dangerously low on numbers and with the complication of an important and necessary club merger to implement was daunting enough. Add to the mix the unexpected departure of a long term coach; feeder clubs struggling to find swimmers from learn to swim, to the extent that we've only received five from our clubs in three years; and a main training pool with a serious humidity problem (thankfully now fixed), and you...

For every swimmer, starts and turns are critical. Let's focus on the latter for a few minutes and think about the aspects that make or break a turn. Is the list below more than you expected? Approach Touch Rotation Push+Glide Fly Kicks Transition to Surface Any swimmer has absolute control over their level of skill for each of those points. Spend a couple of minutes thinking about them, and write down what you need to get right to improve each one. In this article we're going to look at just...