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A love of artistic swimming wins Elizabeth Regional Coach of the Year Award
05 Mar 2024
A love of artistic swimming has saved a local club from folding and won its head coach a regional award.
Denton Artistic Swimming Club was on the brink when Elizabeth Fitzgerald took the reins and her efforts to save the club, boost its membership and put its members on the road to success has won her the North West Coach of the Year (Artistic Swimming) 2023 award from Swim England, the sport’s national body.
Elizabeth’s achievement means she now goes forward to the national awards where she is up against other regional winners.
Her award nomination reads: “Elizabeth came on as head coach in a time where the club was about to fold. She has worked extremely hard to restructure the club so that our members have their wellbeing and welfare put at centre stage. She has developed an inclusive club where there is a place for everyone and the culture she has helped create has seen the club grow 30% in 12 months. She has been able to open our sport to harder-to-reach communities and ensured her team are fully trained and mentored to deliver a difficult discipline to a larger number of neurodiverse swimmers.Our swimmers have benefited from Elizabeth’s new regime at the club, which involves mental resilience activities, neurodiverse inclusion sessions, team building once a month and various other outings that translate to our sport. Her creative mind keeps our swimmers engaged and we are proud to have her lead our team.”
Andy Dwyer, Active Tameside’s Head of Sport and Physical Activity, says: “The club has grown dramatically over the past two years and Elizabeth has played a big part in this through her coaching and passion for the sport. We are proud of her achievement and look forward to supporting the club in the future with their ongoing developments.”
Originally known as synchronised swimming, which became an Olympic discipline at Los Angeles in 1984, artistic swimming is a hybrid of swimming, dance, and gymnastics, wherein swimmers perform routines to music.
In competition, swimmers demonstrate their strength, flexibility, and aerobic endurance by performing complex and elaborate routines in front of panel of judges who use strict guidelines to score the performances, looking at artistic impression and technical merit.
Denton Artistic Swimming Club, a member of the Tameside Sport and Physical Activity Network (TSPAN), meets at Tameside Wellness Centre, in Denton, and Active Medlock and Elizabeth’s award is not the first.
The club was named Swim England’s National Artistic Swimming Club of the Year winners and was runner-up in the Community Club of the Year category at the annual TSPAN awards.
Elizabeth, who began her coaching career in Argentina, says: “I began coaching at Nademos Synchro Club in Buenos Aires. I worked with their novice section and also took on a very special assignment to train Down's Syndrome swimmer, Andrea Lazzari, who went on to compete, representing Argentina, at the DSISO World Championships. I moved back to the UK to qualify as a level 2 artistic swimming coach and swimming teacher but ended up working as the head of development for City of Manchester aquatics swim team for five years. As a coach, I believe in challenging swimmers to become their best selves, to work hard and never give up. I expect swimmers to put in 100% effort and to overcome their fears to achieve their goals.”
Thanks to Elizabeth’s expertise and dedication, the club enjoyed a stellar 2022-2023 season, which included sending a duet to the national age groups championships, two teams going to the combo cup and entering 22 swimmers into the regional novice competition, which saw every member come away with a medal.
Her supporters add: “Elizabeth has completed multiple continual professional development courses, attended many Swim England workshops and paid privately for qualifications to develop herself as a head coach. She puts so many hours into her role and takes her mentoring of new assistant coaches, and young volunteers seriously to ensure they have the skills to maintain our nurturing environment.”
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