Lindsay Trimmings: 'Coaching Membership scheme creates a connected community'

Swim England’s head of coaching Lindsay Trimmings is excited by the launch of Swim England’s new Coaching Membership scheme that will help ‘create a connected community’.

Lindsay recently took on the role after eight years of working at Swim England and is spearheading a new dedicated team to help support coaches across all aquatic disciplines.

There are two Coach Membership packages available – 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 benefits plus a range of exclusive discounts as well as access to a learning and development hub.

Lindsay is excited about the investment within the coaching workforce.

She said: “We’re really excited that Swim England have chosen to really invest in the development of our coaching workforce.

“What we decided to do as a governing body is actually create an independent coaching team within the organisation too, which I’m very pleased to be heading up.”

 ‘A clear line of communication’

On what the coaching membership offer means to the community, Lindsay says it will help coaches find the specific support that they need to help in their development.

“Coaches will now have very clear lines of communication with people at Swim England. They will have more people that they can get support from and can understand exactly who it is they need to interact with to get the specific support that they need too.

“I think that’s going to really help them to be able to move their own coaching career forwards. And that might be a question about insurance and how they’re covered in their clubs or it just might be a question about what’s the next step in their own particular careers.

“It’s a chance for them to get the information they need from the right people in a much more seamless and well communicated way.”

Lindsay says the coach membership scheme is something that would’ve helped her in the early stages of her career and is hopeful that it helps more people take up coaching long term.

“When you are starting out in coaching it’s hard to navigate, particularly when you see it as a career. I always saw coaching as a career, even though I went to university and studied sport and exercise science, it was always coaching that I really wanted to do. And it was hard to understand what that career progression would look like.

“To have the pathways for you to develop as a coach, depending on what your aspirations are, I think just gives a lot more clarity to coaches and particularly those that want to do it as a career.

“They’ll see all those opportunities and understand which is the right one to take up next. So it gives them the chance to do that and to understand that pathway, but also just the opportunity to get to know other coaches as well.

“I was probably one of maybe two or three other female coaches on poolside in the early part of my career. And that was quite challenging because I was different to most people that were on poolside.

“It’s nice that we’ve got a much bigger diversity in our workforce now and if we bring people together, hopefully they will see that that diversity is just diversity of thought, diversity of opinion and people doing things differently. I think that will make our workforce much more innovative and well connected.”

‘I’m really proud and privileged’

After recently taking up her new role, Lindsay is looking forward to working to help develop the coaching community.

“I’m really proud and privileged that the governing body have put me in the position to really drive this forward and it gives me the chance to bring a number of other people with me.

“I’m very passionate about coaching. I come from a coaching background in swimming. I’ve still got lots to learn about the sport and even more to learn about the other disciplines but I’m really committed and impassioned by doing that.

“So I’m really forward to it, and to be leading that team, but also just the diversity of opportunity to work with other people which is what I’ve really enjoyed doing at the organisation and I’ll be getting a chance to do more of that.”

She thinks that having the new team in place will allow them to build greater relationships with local clubs and regions.

“It creates a real central point of reference for coaching, but we’ll obviously have to work a lot with pretty much every other team at Swim England.

“It also means that we will have to keep developing those relationships with the regions, the counties, British Swimming, British Diving, for example, and also agencies such as UK Coaching and Sport England.

“So there’s lots of people that we will be working alongside, but I think it will just mean that there’s a place where that project or that initiative is being driven from.”

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