Swimming

Gresham’s swimming offers lessons and coaching to all ages and all abilities, including the team swimmers who will represent Gresham’s in School, Regional and National competitions.

Gresham’s coaching staff offers many years of experience specialising in all aspects of swimming. We assess each pupil to make sure they are working at the correct level for their ability and encourage them to improve at their own pace so they get the best swimming lessons possible during their time at the school to reach their goals.

Gresham’s Senior School offers various opportunities for pupils to swim from teaching non-swimmers to coaching competitive swimmers to compete in competitions.

Recreational Swimming 

These sessions are for swimmers who enjoy and want to improve their swimming but do not want to take part in team training, so sessions are structured to develop stroke skills, distance swimming and a mixture of both to keep swimmers fit.

There are evening and weekend sessions for pupils to relax and have fun with their friends.

Gresham’s Swimming Team

The team trains up to seven times a week during games times, early mornings and evenings. A typical games training session would be usually be between 2000m – 3000m with stroke development, drills, sprints, distance and dry training.

Each term, the swimming team competes against other schools in various competitions and in March a team is selected to go to the National Aquatic Centre in Stratford to compete in the National Schools Relay Competition. There are limited spaces for the teams so competition between the swimmers is very high to represent the school.

In the summer term, we have our Old Greshamian (OG) Swimming Gala and barbeque which is always very popular, OG swimmers return to Gresham’s to swim against the pupils and talk about their swimming experiences which always inspire the team.

Lifeguarding – The NPLQ (National Pool Lifeguard qualification) is a course open to pupils at Gresham’s and is designed to train pool lifeguards. The candidates complete over forty hours of training to gain the award including adult/child/baby CPR, Automated External Defibrillator, first aid, pool rescue procedures, manual handling techniques, risk assessment, plus all aspects of the day to day running of a swimming pool. 

Gresham’s Lifeguard Club usually has approximately 15 qualified lifeguards with a further 12 undergoing training. The course runs over one term and is offered to pupils in year 11 and above. After the qualification is gained, lifeguards are expected to attend ongoing training once a month for two hours to further their skill development.

Kayaking – Kayaking has become very popular, with training sessions offered in the swimming pool each week. These sessions provide training for outdoor kayaking expeditions for Duke of Edinburgh awards and for recreation.

For more information, please contact Tania Liberman at [email protected]