You're Welcome whatever your level!
The club actively caters for, and supports, all levels of swimmers. Classes range from "Learn-to-Swim" through to "Adult"; Swimming levels range from "Social" to "Competitive" grade.
The various levels of classes are run under the expert guidance of our Head Coach, Phil Hughes. Phil has many years of coaching experience and has made a real impact on the Club's swimmer development and results.
For the social swimmers, a large number of swimmers attend the very popular Friday Night Club Night. Due to the efforts of dedicated parents and carers, who give willingly of their time to act as judges, marshals, time keepers and canteen staff, this night is a real family event. When setting up the weekly schedule of heat events, the club aims to match swimmers on previous result times, rather than on age on block. This method provides swimmers with a close racing experience against swimmers of similar ability and encourages future interest and participation in the sport of swimming.
For the competitive grade swimmers, the Club boasts swimmers who have attained levels from District grade swimming, right through to a National grade swimmer. The Club supports its competitive swimmers under the guidance of Phil Hughes and has recently been elevated to a "Level 3" graded Swimming Club for the 2011 / 2012 year on the back of strong results of the competitive swimmers in 2010 / 2011. Regular updates on upcoming external events are provided within the website to aid in further development, participation and results.
Club and Pool History
The swimming pool owes its origin to the foresight of Mr A Duncan, the Head Teacher during the 1940's. After much fundraising, a pool was completed in 1951, but due to a polio epidemic the pool was not used until the following year. The pool design was unique - large but shallow - resulting in opinions such as - “useless”, “without a deep end”, “just a bird bath”. However, it was acknowledged as a good pool for teaching swimming. Being a ‘fill and draw’ pool, it was emptied, cleaned, re-filled twice a week and manually chlorinated.
In the early 1950's, the Holland Park children were nominated for events in the Primary Schools Swimming Championships - a carnival held in the Valley Baths in March each year. For a couple of years they were “also rans” but by 1959 Holland Park was the premier metropolitan school in junior swimming!!
School swimming races were held on Friday and Monday afternoons - in school hours with many mothers attending. Night meetings began so that the fathers could be involved too. About a dozen pressure lamps were originally used for lighting, which eventually led to the floodlighting of the pool area. The Holland Park State School Amateur Swimming Club was formed in 1970 through the efforts of the then school Principal, Mr Arthur Wood. The first President elected was Norm Seabrook.
During the 1990's the Club fundraised to deepen the pool and reduce the pool length to a standard 25m length. With the support of Education Queensland, the School and the P&C (Michael Wilson and Michael Dowling) the Club was able to complete a new pool over the 1999 winter season. Constructing a new pool enabled a number of other pool improvements to be made including a wet deck and a safety foot ledge around the perimeter of the pool’s deep end. New pool lighting was also installed using part of a $25,000 Federation grant completed by Jan and Tom Arrowsmith and Tim McGahan. The painted blue line around the pool still shows the outline of the original pool.
The remainder of the Federation grant was used to construct a new canteen for the 2003/2004 season. Tim McGahan, Bruce Wallace and Noel Park oversaw this project.
Due to the efforts of Wayne Baillie, Guy Gibbons, Kevin Nicholls and Tom Arrowsmith, the club was awarded a Brisbane City Council grant to extend the pool surrounds, which was completed in the 2003/2004 season.
Further in 2006/2007 the pool was heated as a result of the efforts of the club committee in obtaining a further Brisbane City Council Grant that has provided a more comfortable swimming environment for our members to utilise throughout the majority of the year.
During 2006/2007, the club purchased an electronic timing system, including an electronic scoreboard, the first swim club in the area to do so.
During 2011/2012, the club upgraded the software, electronic timing system and electronic scoreboard to now have the latest technology available. This allows for automation of results resulting in instant result rankings and placings.
