Join us live on our Facebook and YouTube channels on Thursday 1st December at 19:30 for the Swim Wales National Club Awards 2022!
The Swim Wales Performance Coach of the Year celebrates a coach, or coaching team, who have enabled their athletes to thrive over the last 12 months. The Swim Wales Performance team nominated their top three candidates to the Swim Wales Awards Panel, with the winner to be announced on Thursday evening.
City of Cardiff Coaching Team, led by Dale Frantzeskou & Graham Wardell are our first nominees for the award after achieving success across the Swim Wales pathway in 2022.
Domestically, City of Cardiff have excelled. Under the guidance of Dale and Graham, the capital club were the highest performing Welsh club at the British Summer Championships with 40 qualifiers, 12 individual medals & four relay medals won at Ponds Forge.
Their triumphs continued back on home soil at the Swim Wales National Championships 2022 with an incredible haul of 125 Medals won.
These performances led to four swimmers, Harriet Jones, Bradley Newman, Charlotte Evans and Kyle Booth earning selection for the Commonwealth Games, and a further athlete, Kaden Edwards, who earned selection for the 2022 LEN European Junior Championships and qualified for the individual final in the 400m IM.
Looking ahead to the 2023 season, City of Cardiff have the highest representation on the Swim Wales National Squad Programme with 22 Swimmers gaining selection for the 2022/23 squads across the pathway.
The Pembrokeshire County Swim Squad Coaching Team, led by Craig Nelson & Nick Russell are the next nominees in the Swim Wales Performance Coach of the Year category.
Craig and Nick have led a thriving programme in West Wales, which is bearing fruit on the international stage. The coaching pair work with Commonwealth Games bronze medallist and wheelchair user, Lily Rice (S8), who came to the programme having had a long break from the sport. In just over a year, they supported Lily to qualify for the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham where she went on to clinch a place on the podium.
The West Wales coaching team also work with an up and coming S14 athlete, Saskia Webb, who has been selected for the National Squads this season for the first time and won three gold medals at the Junior National Para Swimming Championships this summer.
Nick has been selected by Swim Wales as a coach for the National Para Performance Centre and coaches our para swimmers on a monthly basis in Swansea, and both coaches have gained selection to the Swim Wales national Coaching Team for 2022.
Our final nominees are Adam Baker and Stuart McNarry, who lead the Swim Wales High Performance Centre Team in Swansea.
Adam, who was recently selected to coach for Great Britain at the FINA World Championships, and Stuart have overseen a year in which a selection of their Swansea-based swimmers have excelled at the very top level.
A total of nine swimmers were selected to the 2022 Wales Commonwealth Games Team, with eight swimmers making individual finals, six Welsh long course records broken, and Medi Harris clinching 100m Backstroke bronze. At the World Championships, Daniel Jervis (1500m Freestyle) and Medi Harris (50m & 100m Backstroke) both qualified for finals.
Under the pair’s guidance, Medi went on to win four medals at the LEN European Championships to round off what has been an incredible year.
