Hawks soar to club of the year

BENDIGO Hawks Aquatic has been named Club of the Year at the recent 2023 Swimming Victoria Awards.

Club president Adam Webb said he believed the Hawks won the title in part due to forward thinking by Hawks leadership.

“It is the first time in the club’s history it’s had a strategic plan,” he said.

“The strategic plan gave very clear areas of focus that the club wanted to narrow in on, with a view to creating a really great swimming club in Bendigo.

“Essentially it builds on our three club values which are ‘nurturing aquatic excellence’, ‘champions of fun and friendship’, and ‘developing courageous competitors’.

“Community sporting clubs are run by volunteers, and volunteers in the majority of cases are very time poor. Having a strategic plan is also about managing time better as a committee.”

Mr Webb said part of that strategy implementation involved promoting open swim sessions to the public that encouraged the health benefits of lap swimming, and concluded with a ceremony in which those who had swam the longest distances received awards.

“Everyone’s done it really hard for a few years and getting away from home and finding ways to connect with people and do something healthy is good for your overall wellbeing,” he said.

Mr Webb said he has a vision for Bendigo to become a “swimming hub” that will attract swimmers from everywhere.

He said he believes a way to achieve this would be if the three swimming clubs in town: Bendigo East, Kangaroo Flat, and the Bendigo Hawks all worked towards it.

Hawks members and leadership would also like to foster the ambitions of young swimmers to help them one day reach the level of Faith Leech, Bendigo’s first and only Olympic gold-medallist swimmer to date.

“If the three clubs are all working together, there’s a real genuine opportunity to maybe replicate that in the years ahead,” Mr Webb said.