Let me state first; I do not run a swim club. When I was head coach, I was not a voting member on the board of directors so I did not run the club. I was paid by the club as an employee or self employed. However I’ve been in and around clubs my entire life. And that’s getting to be a pretty long time now as grey starts to overtake any areas requiring a shave down for high performance masters swimming.

The model most commonly used in competitive swimming is that of a not-for-profit organisation run by volunteers with a board of directors. There are other ways though and it might be helpful to learn about alternative strategies. Recently I came across a fascinating artlce about ‘running a club’, written by George Gate.

If you don’t know that name, stop reading and scroll somewhere else. George Gate, if you don’t know him, was a hugely successful coach in a tiny town in Canada. You really should learn about him if you are a historian of swimming.

Strong words, I know, but if you’re still reading you are a curious person like me. maybe you’re thinking ‘okay pal, tell me something I don’t know’.

Imagine the most isolated, tiniest town in your minds eye. You can’t drive there, walking or cycling is everyone’s mode of travelling but there is a two mile stretch of road in the town linking a few homes along the extremely steep fiord’s geographic makeup. The transport is walkways and stairs. Loads of stairs.

There is one industry; a massive pulp mill. Everything else is a spin-off to service that singular industry. Surprisingly they have a pool. It is new indoor pool when George Gate arrived there. It was built because a young boy drowned in the nearby lake. The one-industry town was owned by a huge company Crown-Zellerbach, they bought a pool for the town, just like they had built and paid for almost every building in town. The swim coach worked for the company.

George Gate moved to this isolated town that sits at the end of a fiord along the largely uninhabited British Columbia coast between Vancouver and Prince Rupert. After George Gate coached there, the tiny town could claim more international medals and records than all of the remainder of Canada…combined.

I was lucky to have met Coach Gate when I was ten years old because my coach in Vernon had previously worked for him.

Okay. Now how to run a swim club…I know…I know….it took a long time.

George Gates eventually moved away from Ocean Falls to work in Montreal. His incredible success was obvious. in the soon-to-be biggest club in Canada: Pointe Claire. A giant salary in hub Canada’s largest suburban population in a warm summer place. was A suburb of Montreal.

There he devised another unbelievable success different to coaching; creating a hugely successful team. He scaled up his small town success. He became the pool manager and integrated the swim team into the Pointe Clare pool management portfolio.

The article is worthy of a read. I think it is gold:

So there you go. Something to chew on. I hope you learned from this, I certainly did. I thought the organisation of fundraisers was brilliant.