'Coach Membership offers huge access to volunteer coaches' says Erica Moo

Artistic Swimming coach Erica Moo says Swim England’s new coach membership packages will give a huge access to resources for the volunteer coaching workforce across the country.

Erica is the head coach at Hythe Aqua synchro in Kent and says that the benefits of the coach membership scheme will allow for more opportunities for the smaller clubs across the country.

She said: “The new coach membership programme that Swim England are offering is going to give a huge amount of access to the volunteer workforce across the country in all of the aquatic disciplines.

“It’s going to allow CPD opportunities, training, access to courses all at a discounted rate which sounds great for those small clubs in the grassroots programme.”

Swim England’s Coach Membership offer contains two different packages – Coach and Coach Plus.

The packages are the first coach-specific offers to be developed by the national governing body and includes £20m public liability insurance cover, personal accident and loss of revenue or business interruption cover plus a range of exclusive discounts as well as access to a learning and development hub.

Overcoming a barrier

Erica has been a lifelong supporter of artistic swimming, competing herself from an early age before sticking with the sport by moving into coaching.

“I started artistic swimming when I was eight years old and I carried on throughout university before getting into coaching.

“At the time I still wanted to compete but it was in a time before masters competitions were available so I tried coaching and I loved it.

“I began as a volunteer at Rugby ASC and then when I started my full time career I moved to Reading Royals before taking over at Hythe Aqua back in 2011.”

She explained some of the difficulties she’s had as a volunteer coach and is thankful that the coach membership offer aims to resolve them and gives her more opportunities to develop her skills as a coach.

“As a volunteer coach, I find it’s really difficult sometimes to access courses, the club is an amateur club so we don’t get paid as volunteers.

“It can be really hard to access local courses. We’re based down in South East Kent so a lot of our coaching or CPD is done in Reading, the Midlands or even Loughborough and the cost of getting there is really difficult.”

“With lockdown and Covid we’ve been able to access Zoom training courses and CPD opportunities which has been great to allow us to develop further but we need to have more accessibility to volunteers because so many give back to the sport that they love.

“And I think this programme allows that because it gives volunteer coaches access to training and development resources whenever they want it and just offers that bit of support that they need.”

To sign up for the Swim England Coach Membership scheme, please click here.