4th August 2008
To Junior Parents
CC Junior coaches, Rowing Committee
From Tom Courtney, Director of Rowing Molesey
Oliver Keech, Club Captain
Dickon Poole, Junior Coordinator
Junior Rowing Programme at Molesey
We wanted to let you know about the discussions underway around the Junior Rowing Programme at Molesey. We hadn't planned to write at this point but it’s been prompted by feedback from parents expressing what they think might be happening. We’ve even had comment that junior rowing will be ceasing at Molesey. This is complete nonsense.
The junior rowing programme has been established at Molesey for 12 years. It has grown into one of the largest club based programmes in the country. It is an integral part of Molesey Boat Club and no one believes it should be anything other than this. Over its history it has changed in order to continue to develop and improve. The process we are going through now is no different to that. It’s all about how we make the programme better. It is encumbent upon the club committee on behalf of the members to ensure all sections of the club look at what they are doing and embrace/deliver ways to improve.
At this point we are going through those discussions and here’s just a flavour of the type of issues being discussed ;
• We want all juniors to enjoy their rowing in a safe and fun environment. We have to ensure numbers participating grow in a controlled way. With the run up to 2012, government encouragement around sports participation/healthy living and the club's success and profile we believe we will face a potential significant influx of numbers. We are looking at the best way to deal with this.
• We have a new school programme ( Whitgift) joining us in September. They want to use a different model of operation within the club - a hosting model – where they are responsible from the school for all coaching and support work and simply use our infrastructure and facilities. We need to work through how this can operate effectively.
• We currently do relatively well at younger age levels ( numbers and success). We do less well at older age levels. We are looking at why this is the case particularly because we also currently run the most successful World Class Start centre in the country in terms of consistently getting junior athletes into our national teams. We are also looking at how we get more older juniors to remain with the club.
• How can we enhance the breadth and depth of our coaching resources.
• How do we accommodate the wishes of the schools who have given us insights into how they want their rowing programmes to develop. The good news is they want to do this with Molesey as their partner.
These are just a flavour of the issues being worked through. Debate on them is passionate and thorough – you would expect nothing less. Just as you would expect us to continue to look at how we can improve the junior programme. Changes will happen but they will be debated in advance, communicated effectively and result in the juniors enjoying an ever better rowing experience at Molesey over the coming months.
If you have any specific questions then please contact one of us to discuss them. We‘d be delighted to give you more detail at this stage if you require it.
Tom Courtney – Director of Rowing
Oliver Keech – Captain
Dickon Poole – Junior Coordinator
