In support of the This Girl Can Campaign developed by Sport England we decided to run our own event as part of UCLU Swimming. We wanted to encourage and celebrate all the active women at UCL by showing them what we (the girls in the club do) and what they can achieve.
And to make things really fun and to show off just how tough we are, we decided to hire two lanes at the London Fields Lido Pool! (Yes…the outdoor “heated” one)
Taking charge of the lanes we created a training set for the girls to follow. We watched the girls at first and offered advise wherever we could. All the girls had very different backgrounds in swimming, and it was really great seeing how little changes in their stroke techniques made a really big splash in developing their swimming styles.
And as we can see the effort really paid off!
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They were only smiles here…
Until Jackie said…
“Butterfly”

Thankfully Lara was there to save the day

Because after all THIS GIRL CAN !

After 200m of butterfly that many girls had never even imagined being able to do, we thought it was time to end the session by showing the girls just how fun swimming can really be:
Team Relays…wheelbarrow edition! Essentially holding onto the back of someone else while swimming freestyle. It’s more fun than it sounds.
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Overall it was a huge success!

And although, the day started off on a bit of a rough note, given it was November 10th and we don’t live in the Caribbean.

We did end up having a turn up of 15 girls who proudly and relecutantly helped me hold the banner up in the end. It was clear they were itching to get back into the water for more training, although some may argue the warmth of the pool could have played a factor in their enthusiasm.

Thank you everyone for coming and making it such a wonderful experience. Given the smiles on your faces I can only assume you had as much fun as we did. Special shout outs to our club’s advisor Laura-Jane Elizabeth White for helping organise the event and to the two girls: Jacquelyn Yang our Women’s Competitive Captain and Lara Cosford one of our star competitive members for their efforts in making this event flow as swimmingly as it did.
Jackie
Lara
Remember, This Girl Can