Thanks to all those who came along to last night’s pool session – a great start to our indoor season!
As you’ll all be aware, we’re trying hard to maintain social distancing during the sessions as best we can – everyone’s health and safety is a core responsibility for the Club; and this is something we have to do to comply with the Risk Assessment that we’ve agreed with the Leisure Centre.
By their very nature, our training sessions will involve some close-contact (<2m) between paddlers and with coaches, especially during rescue practice and polo training. But we are aiming to keep this to the minimum time necessary to achieve training objectives – and it is therefore really important that we do our utmost to keep apart from one another when we’re not actually training on the water.
Please could all pool participants therefore take care to follow these precautions: if this means that it takes us a little longer to get going, that’s a small price to pay for keeping people safe. We’ve highlighted below some aspects that we particularly want to draw your attention to:
Arrival & Changing
- Please arrive just in time to be changed and ready to enter poolside for 7pm (i.e. don’t arrive too early – but don’t leave it until 7pm to start getting changed!). To minimise time in the changing rooms, please arrive pre-changed where possible (e.g. swimwear under clothes). Please wear T-shirts as well as swimwear (for warmth as well as modesty!).
- Make your way straight to the changing rooms – there should be no need to check-in at reception unless asked to on arrival.
- Please wait at the changing room exits before going poolside – we’ll need to be given the ‘all-clear’ that the previous group has left before we enter.
- Please wear face coverings in the building, including changing rooms and poolside. You won’t need to wear them once on the water!
- Feel free to bring your own boats & paddles – as long as they’re clean. Deposit them by the external doors in the car park before the start of the session.
On Poolside
- Please keep 2m away from one another (except other family members).
- We will have a one-way system on poolside: please turn right out of the changing rooms and queue 2m apart by the external doors to collect a boat, paddle, spray-deck, buoyancy aid (for polo) and helmet. Continue anti-clockwise around the pool until you reach a point at least 2m from the person in front of you, where you can kit-up and launch (when given the all-clear to do so). Please don’t go back-and-forth past other people to collect kit! At the end of the evening we’ll reverse this procedure, going clockwise!
- Parents are welcome on poolside to help children carry boats and get kitted-up, also to help them empty boats if required during the session (we’ll show you how!). You might even be able to help in the water, if this is something you’d be willing to do – in which case, come prepared with swimwear – but please work closely only with your own children!
- No outdoor shoes on poolside please.
In the Pool
- Please try to keep 2m (the length of a paddle) away from other paddlers, unless agreed by coaches (e.g. to practise rescues and during ‘close-contact’ polo drills and games, when you may, if you’re happy to, spend short periods in closer contact with individual paddlers).
- Coaches will aim to keep 2m away from participants as much as possible, but will need to be closer at times (e.g. for hands-on rolling training; and to recover capsized paddlers). However, we will each aim to spend less than 15min total within 2m of each individual paddler (and less than 1min total face-to-face within 1m of each individual paddler) – in line with Test & Trace ‘Close Contact’ guidelines.