Learn to swim programme coming

THE Zambia Amateur Swimming Union (ZASU) in collaboration with the Olympic Youth Development Centre (OYDC) in Lusaka and the Ministry of Sports have embarked on an ambitious programme to introduce swimming lessons in all the 10 provinces.
ZASU president David Thomson said the programme dubbed: ‘learn to swim’ is aimed at changing the face of swimming from being a minority elitist sport to an all-embracing discipline.
Thomson said the programme would provide a wide spectrum for selecting players at club and national team levels.
He said for Zambia to realise the dream of minting more medals at prestigious international circuits, there was need to woo more swimmers to the sport.
The ZASU president added that one of the areas that his union wanted to address in its implementation of the 2010-2015 strategic development plan was the syllabus for the development of swimming in Zambia by increasing the number of children participating in the sport.
He said without more swimmers, competition standards and the number of clubs were not going to improve.
“We will introduce the ‘learn to swim’ programme in all provinces in Zambia as this is a life skill. Strategic sponsors have been approached.
This programme will give us a bigger pool of swimmers to select from, for clubs, for our national leagues and ultimately for those prestigious medals on the international circuit,” he said.
And Thomson disclosed that ZASU had set up a commission under his chairmanship to look into the capacity of coaches in terms of number and standards.
He said the commission would look at key areas such as accreditation, the code of conduct, database, qualification, training needs and programmes, selection process and conditions of service.
“If we are to achieve the growth of swimming in numbers and standards, we need to strategically grow our coaching capacity and we have now set up the commission to directly address this issue,” he said.