Our Awards Speech
Good afternoon and welcome to the Albatross Annual Awards Ceremony where we will be acknowledging the contribution made across the last season by divers, coaches and club members towards the growth and ongoing success of our club and to the sport. My name is Emma West, and I am part of the Albatross Committee. These past few months have seen an incredible change in the club with new facilities and increased capacity and membership. We welcome you today as older established members and new, and offer you the opportunity to meet members and their families from across the programme who you may not have met before in your own sessions.
We are always pleased to see so many parents here as you are a significant part of the club’s success. Without your commitment to Albatross, we would not be the club we are today; you support your divers emotionally, financially and by giving your time to travel to training and competition. You ensure the divers have the right kit, eat the right food and are in the right place to give them the best possible chance of enjoying their sport and reaching their personal goals. We do not have an award to present to you, but your diver’s thanks and enjoyment of our sport and their club is, we hope, the best reward. As I have said many times to parents, we all want a child who wakes in the morning excited to be going diving.
Our Diving Club
This year we celebrate 46 years since Albatross started as a standalone club separated from Reading Swimming Club and 56 years since our first divers dived into the then new Central Swimming Pool in 1968. We are proud of our heritage and proud of how highly we are regarded both locally and nationally, with each of our achievements supporting the fact that we are all contributing to our success. As many of you know, we have been nomadic for the past 6 years since the closure of Central Pool, but we now have a new home pool to be proud of and one that, we hope, will support diving in Reading and its surrounding area, for many years to come.
There is much for the club to remember and celebrate this afternoon. The 2023/24 season opened with our first international trip since Covid when we took a team of 16 divers to the Irish Open Diving Championships in Dublin and followed with club members competing for their schools at the English Schools Diving Championships in Manchester as part of the Southeast Divisional team. Post Christmas then saw us compete successfully across the country with placings, finalists and medals being gained at all levels from our Learn to Dive taking part in the Southeast Region supported ACE camps and Stingray events in Southampton, the pre-skills Gavin Brown competition also in Southampton, national qualification success at Skills qualification events in Southend and Tunbridge Wells and Age Group qualifiers in Southend and Southampton both leading to podium success at National Age Groups in Birmingham and National Skills in Southend.
Whilst Albatross is a competitive diving club and our success at competition is measurable, our club and our sport is so much more than just medals and podiums and our community, personal goals, empathetic support for one another and enjoyment of sport are all evident in everything we do and achieve. Our values are always present and this shines through wherever we are. In addition to our divers competing Albatross provided Judges, Team Managers and Officials at National Events mentioned but also Judges at the GB Aquatics Junior Elites and the GB Aquatics Diving Championships in Birmingham used to select the GB Olympic Diving Team that was so successful this summer in Paris. Interest in the sport and the club could not be stronger. We now have 215 divers in the club, this time last year I reported 80.
In support of our programme, we thank all of our coaches, committee and lifeguards. We have such a strong core team that have been steadfast in their pursuit of ensuring our sustainability and longevity and we stand before you now as together we start a new season, a new era. These speeches, written each year, are always a cause for reflection, but this year has been one of such change it has, perhaps, been one of the more difficult to write without becoming overly emotional. Some of us have stood together for the past 12 years as our children have grown into young adults and moved from divers to coaches by way of university and back again, in the belief that together we could grow the club, that we could have new facilities, that we could maintain our presence on the national podiums despite the challenges we have faced. We may be older than we might have hoped to be when this day arrived, but we have achieved all this and more. We are proud to announce that Albatross has been recognised by Swim England Southeast Region as their Regional Diving Club of the Year and they have nominated us for a National Award. This recognition is for all of us, but I would like to ask that the divers join me in applauding the support they are given willingly and unfailingly by their parents and the coaches. This speech will be shared on our website so that all our members, whether here this afternoon or not, can receive our thanks and applause for everything that they contribute to our club.
And so, to our awards and for this I would like to introduce Malcolm Green, Albatross Head Coach, who will be presenting these first selection of trophies.
Learn to Dive
This afternoon, our first awards go to a selection of divers who we recognise as the most improved on the Learn to Dive programme. The proficiency and determination of all our divers on the lesson programme made this very difficult to select, but these winners have shown commitment to training, have listened well and responded to their coaches and taken every available opportunity to improve their skills. They have been respectful and risen to challenges presented. We are very proud of them and the role models they represent. They are recognised as a pleasure to teach, are responsive and show genuine enthusiasm and enjoyment of the sport. The Learn to Dive programme is largely recreational, but there are some opportunities to compete which are offered to divers who wish to take part and can meet the requirements. The programme is also the steppingstone to join the competitive squads with all our Pre- Skills divers having followed this path.
We recognise that some have been unable to join us this afternoon so will have their awards presented in training, but we invite to collect their Learn to Dive Progression and Improvement Award:
Tyler Gaul
Ruby Darby
Matthew Basham
Charlie Chan
Sienna Steer
Tatiana Ramsey Williams
Francis Dean
Jude Jones
Connie Petter
Livi Knight
Dee Dee Shields
Daphne Sutherland
Poppy Rae Fern
Zoe Goodwin
Grace Langdon
Zoloire Parker-Sillito
Elliott Britton
Newcomers Awards
Moving on to the Albatross Newcomer Awards.
This award is presented each year to a diver or divers who, having entered the club, have shown significant improvement and commitment in training and a positive approach in their attitude towards coaches, themselves, and others as they enter the earliest pathway on their competitive diving journey.
Our newcomer’s awards are categorised as Pre-Skills Special Recognition for Improvement and Performance with these divers, relatively new to competitive sport, having been selected for their willingness to listen to their coaches and make required alterations in their dives, a trait we commend all our Pre-Skills divers for this year, and a determination to improve and succeed. They have recently moved up to the Skills Competition Squad and are rarely anything but cheerful. We applaud:
Harry Hancock and Millie Toms
Most Significant Progress in Novice Diving
We would now like to recognise the diver or divers who have shown the Most Significant Progress in Novice Diving during 2023/24.
It is sometimes hard to perceive how difficult it is to qualify for a national event especially in a sport that requires split second precision, absolute focus and an ability to pick up and carry on even when the previous dive has not quite gone to plan. Through a combination of dedicated coaches and committed parents and divers we have sustained our presence on the podiums of all major events this year with 7 of the Skills Squad qualifying for nationals and in presenting this year’s award we would first like to commend all of our Skills divers for perhaps the best overall performance of the club at National Skills for some years with 2 bronze medals from Thomas and Ariana and, in addition, 2 further top 6 podium placings from Millan and Sam. Whilst recognising podium success is important in competitive sport, we also recognise the performance of the diver in the event where the number of entrants can differ vastly depending on age and gender and part of the success of the diver is an ability to maintain focus in a larger group and drive forward for new PB’s even when previous event positions have been lower than hoped for. Our winners this year have both enjoyed regional success, risen to the challenges presented and trained with focus and commitment. They have worked hard on their techniques, been brave in trying new dives and will now go forward in their diving journey to National Age Group qualification. We applaud Ellie Petter and Thomas Oxlade.
We now have 8 divers in our Skills Squad, and we wish them all every success in their training for the 2025 National Skills qualification events.
Advanced Diving
Moving from novice diving to the advanced diving of age group and elite competition is a huge step both in the stamina required to be able to maintain focus across three- and four-day competition schedules and in the range of dives required with ever increasing degrees of difficulty.
Our Significant Progress in Advanced Diving award winner this year has gained repeated PB’s throughout the year and showed a determination to improve in every aspect of her past performance. She had some strong competition for the award from across her squad but, following strong regional performance and selection for her home country of Turkey’s team this summer, we are pleased to announce this year’s winner of the Significant Progress in Advanced Diving Award as Naya Sogut.
We now have 8 divers in the Advanced Diving Squad and wish them well in their bid for Age Group qualification next year.
As I have said before, in an abridged quote from past Chair Richard Hollingworth in 1994 “diving asks a lot from a young person. Not just the obvious attributes of courage, athleticism, and suppleness, but perhaps more importantly self-confidence and discipline. It is rare that a young diver will have all these qualities which is where all of us has a part to play whether we be parents, coaches, or fellow divers.” We are now going to talk some more about these qualities as we are joined by Anne Jessel, our Club President as we move to award The Presidents Cup.
The Presidents Cup
These first set of awards presented have clearly shown the progression in diver development and competition. We have moved from learn to dive through competitive newcomers, novice diving and advanced diving to
The Presidents Cup which recognises a level of excellence in competitive diving and achievement in any given year. We had a number of nominees including Finlay Stratford for his medal performance at the 2024 National Age Group Finals and Hernan Mosqueda Jolly and Joe Foster for their performance at the 2023 Irish Open Diving Championships but, today, the Presidents Cup is presented a diver who only started competing at national level in 2023 and has, this year, needed to put all of their energy into the challenges of building a Group B list (of what most of you would call “proper dives” rather than the jumps and lineups of the younger age categories). Early qualification at the East Region Skills and medal success at the Southeast Regional qualifier did not guarantee success at national level but our winner today has shown the attributes applauded by any club, and ones that you have heard echoed in our previous winners this afternoon: Determination, respect, a willingness to listen and learn, responsiveness, responsibility, hardwork, supportiveness and teamanship ensured bronze medal national success and, with these traits, her positive attitude, and the clubs support our winner should go on to be a worthy Age Group diver this season. We applaud the winner of the 2023/24 Presidents Cup, Ariana Fox.
We now present three awards that recognise the worthy attributes of supportiveness and team spirit and the ability to rise to the challenges required from diving and we welcome back Malcolm to present these awards.
Supportiveness in training is a welcome attribute displayed by many. It may be an appreciative clap or cheer when something goes well, a well done. It may be an understanding pat on the back when something does not go quite so well. Across the club there are several that stand out as worthy team players: In the Learn to Dive and Pre-Skills sections we see repeated supportiveness from Elliott on a Monday, Ria, Brielle, Charlie and Nina on a Tuesday and Jude, Isabelle, Miriam and Ruby on a Thursday. This spirit makes the session more enjoyable for both divers and coaches and is a pleasure to see. Across the competitive squad divers’ it has been very hard to select a single winner as these are all some of the most supportive young people we have had the pleasure to have in the club, they encourage each other, they applaud and they commiserate both in training and competition. They are friends inside of diving and out. We have, however, managed to select two worthy divers from across the club for this award this year who have both been recognised for their encouragement of their teammates when they are struggling on a new dive and a clap of encouragement is much needed and their supportiveness of their teammates when in Ireland last year. Our Supportive Diver Award goes to Poppy Knight and Makar Smyk.
Team Spirit
As we have said Team Spirit is an attribute that we value highly, and it is evident wherever we train and compete. Pre-Covid we used to travel abroad once, sometimes twice a year, taking a team of divers with Team Managers and Coaches, to compete against club peers from across the world. Whilst hard work, these trips were invaluable to the diver in building character, personal awareness, self-discipline, and organisation away from the close support of their families and an opportunity offered by clubs across the country with the support of Swim England accredited training for the support staff. As we have said, last year we took a team of 16 divers to Ireland and, for some, this was their first time away from home with just the club. The team were a credit to themselves and their families and returned home the stronger for the experience. Next year we plan to take a team to Dubai for their National Aquatics Championships, and we know that the spirit and respect built by the team will be present once more. For the support staff in the team, it is mostly about keeping the divers safe, nourished, and hydrated, ensuring that they are in the right place at the right time, have slept and are prepared to dive. However, in recognition of the importance we place on Team Spirit, we wish to recognise one member of the Ireland team for her unfailing good humour despite the long days and inevitable tiredness. Please join me in applauding our Team Spirit award winner Kelly Jones, the queen of after dinner games.
The Challenge Award
The Challenge Award this year goes to 2 divers who have been consistent in their perseverance to overcome dive barriers to reach national qualification. Diving excellence can be repetitious, but they have stuck with it and having overcome persistent nerves and dive blocks won through and moved forward. A year ago, one of them did not even have the dives to qualify, but he is now moving from Skills to Age Groups. In selecting these 2 we also wish to recognise the challenge faced by a third diver, Hannah Ashdown, in her drive to return to competition after breaking her wrist this year, but today we applaud our Challenge Award winners Millan Colton and Alice Jones.
Keith Meek Award
We now come to the awards for volunteering and coaching, the Keith Meek Award, the Youth Coach Development Award, and the Mary Kinghorn Coach Award and we would like to invite Anne back to present these please.
Keith Meek was the first club Chair back in 1978 when the club started, and this award recognises the contribution to the club by a volunteer. We have, since July, started to pay for coaching and some administration but without the support of our volunteers the club and the sport would not be success that it is.
We had several nominations for club support, much of which is unseen by most of the club, but without which we would not be the professionally run success you see today. It is clear to us that behind much of what we are able to achieve there is an administrative task that goes largely unnoticed but without which we would not be able to function: we need to ensure we attract funding, we need to ensure that we can participate in training and development opportunities, we need to ensure we adhere to governance laws and are complying with legislative criteria, we need to ensure that our children and coaches are protected, we need to be auditable, be accountable and we need to be able to demonstrate our professionalism. There is nothing that we could have achieved as volunteers under these nominations without being able to document and evidence these attributes and we ask you all to recognise this. When we look to present this award, the recipient has normally focused on one aspect of the club but this year our nominee has a toe almost across the board; she is a Team Manager, a lifeguard, part of the social team and, from next month, will be a qualified coach and regional judge, all whilst having 3 children in the club, learning to dive in our adult sessions and working. We have great pleasure in presenting the Keith Meek award to Anjali Colton.
We have, for some time, encouraged our older divers to take an interest in coaching and some have taken up the challenge and become Assistant Coaches on our Learn to Dive programme. Once a diver is 14, they can become poolside helpers on the learn to dive scheme and at 16 we will support those showing commitment to coaching in achieving this recognised qualification.
At this point I would like to thank on behalf of the club all our coaches who have helped us by supporting the programmed sessions throughout the year highlighting Lauren, Maya and Hannah as Assistant Coaches and Grace, James Rodgers, Claire, Jeff and Charlie as Full Dive Coaches, who, whilst not squad leads, all support the programmes with their own divers to coach and Joe and Anjali as Poolside Helpers. Alongside these we have our bank coaches of Lizzie, Charlotte, Edward, Matt and James West without whom we would be unable to cover absences and taster sessions.
Balancing schoolwork, university, jobs and contributing to any sport is hard but without the support of all our coaches and poolside helpers we would not be able to operate the full programme that we do and one which matches any of the larger competitive clubs in its offer of a junior lesson programme from complete beginner to a full competitive programme and our new adult sessions. They join our team of squad lead coaches: Malcolm, Chris, and Hernan.
Youth Coach Development Award
We now present the Youth Coach Development Award to a club member who has shown unfailing commitment to their coaching whilst initially still maintaining their own training regime and then, after largely hanging up their swim-bag at the end of last year has now embraced their coaching role to include Skills Squad lead in addition to supporting the Learn to Dive Programme coaching on 4 of our 5 programmed days each week. It is fair to say that without this coaches commitment to the new programme we would not have been in a position to expand as we have and his transition from teenage diver to young adult coach has been a pleasure to watch. He is respected by both adults and divers, he is unfailingly good humoured and responsive to both questions and calls for help, he is organised and level headed, he is Hernan Mosqueda Jolly.
The Mary Kinghorn trophy
The Mary Kinghorn trophy is awarded each year by the club to the coach who it is felt has best contributed to diver progression through their support, encouragement, patience, and technical coaching. This year, as in each year, this was a difficult decision as all of our coaches show these attributes and more but, as highlighted earlier, we have this year, been particularly proud of the progression of our Skills divers from their early development under Matt and Lizzie to their regional and national success this spring and summer. Whilst recognising the support given to these divers by Hernan and Charlie we would like to award the Mary Kinghorn Coach Trophy to Malcolm Green as lead coach to the 2023/24 Skills Squad.
Chris Barker Shield
And so, to our final award. I would like to welcome Malcolm Green to return to present the Chris Barker Shield. This award is presented each year to the diver who has shown all round excellence in their achievements at competitive diving and is given in memory of one of the club’s earliest coaches who sadly died in the storms of 1987. It is open to all competitive divers and for 2023/24 is awarded to a diver who has consistently maintained a high degree of excellence in diving throughout their career with us. This year has been a change for this diver as they became the oldest of the squad with Joe and Hernan leaving after Ireland, but they have continued to train and mentor and encourage the younger divers joining the squad as a role model and ambassador for the club. Winning a silver medal on platform in Ireland and bronze medals for his performance on the 3m as a guest at the East Region Age Group Qualifiers and 1m at National Age Groups has brought the podium positions he deserved as he manages the fine line between studying for A levels and sport. This award is never just about scores and medals, it reflects the diver as a member of the whole Albatross family, it goes to a diver who consistently supports, consistently challenges and is consistently respectful and attentive. I am proud to tell you that the Chris Barker Shield for 2023/24 is presented to Fin Stratford.
We thank you for joining us this afternoon, with special thanks to 3 ladies who have worked tirelessly to ensure all the fun elements of this afternoon were there for you to enjoy – I present Fay, Kelly and Anjali. I would also ask you to join with me in thanking Anne Jessel, our President, for joining us this afternoon and sharing with us our celebration for this past year. Finally, we send our very best wishes to those who are not with us and hope to see you all again next year.
Thank you.
