Curro Durbanville Aquatics – new swim coach gets club swimmers ready
08 November 2021Mickey Olivier is getting his Curro Durbanville Aquatics club swimmers ready for the impending season. It will run until the end of April 2022. The 10-lane, covered and heated pool is open to all learners in the surrounding area and not just Curro. This is the perfect setting in which to train these budding young swimmers for the races ahead. Having taken the post at the Aquatics Club in May 2021, Mickey has been busy coaching swimmers between the ages of 11 and 23. Many of them show great promise in the pool.
With a personal background in swimming himself – Mickey trained with Wayne Ridden who is on the Olympic team’s coaching staff. The Club’s coach motivates the swimmers in an empathetic way and understands what they are going through. He uses personal techniques to help them compete to their best ability. He also advise them on what to do to make all the difference to their performance, as he has been through all the galas and swim meets himself as he grew up in Pietermaritzburg.
Swimming an analogy for life
He also believes swimming is an analogy for life, and the sport can teach youngsters important lessons in the pool that they can apply day-to-day, “Swimming requires you to be disciplined, be on time, do the work and trust the process. And you need to work really hard. But sometimes you do put in your all and it may or may not always work out; that is an analogy for life. Swimming is a very humbling sport, there is always someone chasing you to be better so you need to be on top of your game. It is also a very mental, physical and emotional sport; you need to be strong as mentally as you are physically to do well.”
Mickey says that training the swimmers in the Curro Durbanville Aquatics pool also brings with it huge benefits. Having trained youngsters in Potchefstroom at an open-air swimming pool which was pummeled by freezing temperatures in winter and sweltering temperatures in summer, having a pool that is indoors and heated makes training all year round a pleasure.
“We want to develop swimmers to eventually compete internationally and this club’s great facilities provide the perfect environment in which to do so. With Mickey on board as our coach, we feel proud to be able to offer the learners from within our wider community the opportunity to come and train with someone who understands the sport as intimately as he does, and to perform at their best,” concludes Dirk van Zyl, Executive Head at Curro Durbanville.
For more information on the Curro Aquatics Club, contact 021 975 6377 or karlien.b1@curro.co.za
Read the original article here: https://schoolsthatrock.co.za/curro-durbanville-aquatics-new-swim-coach-gets-club-swimmers-ready/