West Midlands Regional Coach of the year 2021
Luke Harris Newport Head Coach
Luke has been a member of Newport SC since 2007 aged 9 yrs, a quiet young boy who always trained hard and competed to the best of his ability, he was a valued member of the swimming squad.
As soon as he was 14 he attended the Young Volunteer Program and became a qualified Timekeeper, so that as his competing opportunities declined he was able to give back to the sport and club he loved. He started helping to coach a lane once a week fitting it in around his own training and exams and attended galas as Team Manager, timekeeper and chaperone.
He has been a fantastic role model for our young swimmers particularly the boys. At each stage he has improved his knowledge, at age 16 he completed the UKCC Level 1 Coaching course and has been coaching every week since then bringing new ideas to the sessions and making it enjoyable for the swimmers and being very willing to cover sessions whenever possible.
He completed his Level 2 coaching qualiication in 2018 and took over as Head Coach in January 2019.
Luke worked tirelessly to keep the children motivated during lockdown, recording workouts for them and setting challenges. Now they are back in the pool he has helped them gain confidence again, and the club has gone from strength to strength with swimmers regularly achieving PBs, county and regional times. He has made some changes to training sessions to try and maximise what all swimmers can achieve in a session, and he gives a huge amount of time to our swimmers, he seems to live at the pool! It's clear he really cares about helping them to be the best they can be, and making the club work for swimmers at all levels, and with different aspirations, abilities and interests. What he does for Newport and the children does not go unnoticed, and I wanted to put this nomination in to try and explain the huge difference he has made to the club, and how appreciated he is.
He has also been a regular Coach on the County Development Program over that last few years and helped to delivered a number sessions via Zoom to our County swimmers.
Luke was also recently selected to be on the Regional Coach Development program working under Marc Spackman from the Royal Wolverhampton School, which includes working as a Skills Coach on the Regional Development Program.
Statement from Shropshire ASA re recent Press
We understand that a former coach in our County, Tom Piggott has received a ten year sentence for the abuse of children whilst acting as a coach. The County and the Region are reviewing the Policy and Procedures in relation to his time as a coach.
The County and the Region are clear that he met the requirements of a coach in relation to DBS and undertaking the appropriate training, which is the requirements for people to coach.
The Region have withdrawn the Volunteer award.
We are clearly shocked and disgusted by his behaviour.
As was said in court he abused his position of responsibility and he clearly is a manipulative and devious person. We in Shropshire are clear that all necessary procedures were in place and in conjunction with the Region we are re-reviewing our training and scrutiny of coaches.
As you may have seen the Region has advertised for a Designated Safeguarding lead.
We will continue to review our practice.
Report on recent Development Meet in Shropshire Star. Thanks Mark Hale.
