[Lifesaving] BULSCA National Championships
The final stop on my whirlwind,
action-packed UK tour was the city of Bath. I love the place; it’s a beautiful
city, and really nice just to wander around, as I discovered last Easter. This
time however I wasn’t there to sight see, but to run the BULSCA Student
Lifesaving Championships.
Way back at the start of May last
year I rashly stood for the role of Championships Coordinator on the BULSCA
governing committee. I had no idea what I’d let myself in for to be honest;
obviously I’d experienced the Championships several times as a competitor, and
had a little experience of organising smaller competitions, but this was
another level. I was apprehensive, and it turned out to be both easier and
harder, less work and more work, than I was expecting.
What I will say is that going
away to a conference the week directly preceding the Champs was a really bad
idea. Not from a scientific point of view, as I’ve blogged about already, but
it certainly made sorting out the last minute problems really difficult!
I spent a lot of Friday shopping
for props for the incidents, both on my way there and when I arrived in Bath. I
also had to meet the duty manager at the pool to sort out a few last minute
details, collect the keys for the two scout huts where the competitors were
staying, and make sure that all of the people staying on the Friday night arrived
and found where they were staying. This led to some logistical problems, as the
minibus that was being brought to ferry the international visitors around was
doubling as equipment transport. I don’t think I’ve ever squeezed so much into
my small car!
Competitors diving at the start of one of the speed events. (Credit: Adam Martin)
On Saturday I was up bright an
early for some more logistical shuffling, before heading to the University of
Bath campus to set up for Registration. This was one of the most stressful
parts of the weekend for me. I’d not managed to get everything printed out the
night before after running out of ink (I’d left the spares at the scout hut
where people were sleeping), and I didn’t have as much time as I would have
like to get it all done before people started arriving and wanting to get
started. In the end I had to give up on printing out absolutely everything and
just get the bare essentials done, hoping it would be enough. I also had to use
some of my judges to help out with registration, something I hadn’t wanted to
do as it tied them up and slightly delayed the start.
In the end though we got started
on time, and the day ran very smoothly. Once the competition started it was
basically in the hands of the judges; all I had to do was make sure they were
fed at lunchtime, and that everyone was happy. I did breakdown just after the
start, as I felt like the beginning of the day had been a bit of a disaster,
but my friends helped me through it. Leaving the competition for a bit helped
as well; I needed to go and get lunch for everyone anyway.
One of the manikin carry events in full flow. (Credit: Adam Martin)
After that the rest of the day
went pretty smoothly really. There was a bit of confusion at the end of the
lunch break over what time the events were restarting, and we went five minutes
over at the end, but it was fine. There was loads of food for everyone at
dinner, and the quiz that I ran seemed to go down well. I was even dragged to
the pub for a quick drink by some of the judges, which was a great idea in
hindsight, even if it did keep me up a bit later printing out all of the stuff
for the Sunday.
Speaking of which, Sunday didn’t
go nearly as well as Saturday had done. Whilst everyone was there on time, it
took far longer to set the dry SERC up than I had anticipated – this was partly
thanks to some last minute changes that were needed, and partly because we
weren’t being able to access the manikins until an hour later than we wanted. I was also slightly short of helpers; I
had just enough people to be bodies and to have one to do each transfer stage,
but I needed more to run the long distance between the dry and wet SERCs. I
thought I’d arranged for the first team through to help out with that, but I
made the mistake of leaving after the captains’ briefing before checking that
everything was running smoothly.
The RNLI ran a wet SERC for us this year. As usual, they pulled out all of the stops.
They brought a brand new, real rescue boat (minus engine) and put it in the pool! (Credit: Adam Martin)
In my defence, I had to check out
of my hotel, return the scout hut keys, and buy lunch for the judges. But I
could probably have waited a little bit. As it turned out my extra help managed
to forget that they were supposed to become runners, and just stayed on
poolside. I got worried phone calls from the wet SERC wondering why it was all
taking so long, and arrived back slightly concerned to find that we were a
couple of hours behind schedule, and that the dry-to-wet transfer was taking
forever. I quickly sorted that out, but then had to sort out extra pooltime as
we were running seriously short.
Fortunately, it turned out that
there was no one booked into the pool after us (well, one lane only), and we
managed to make back some time with a more efficient process for team movement.
But we still needed an extra hour of pooltime, and had to reverse the normal
order of the heats to accommodate the swimming lesson. But we got everything
done in the end. A couple of hours later I’d stumbled my way through the awards
ceremony, and was on my way home. I barely made it without falling asleep.
Sorting out registration on the Sunday morning. This was the least frantic I was all day! (Credit: Adam Martin)
After reflecting on the
experience, I have to say that I’m glad I did it. I’m not sure that I would say
it was entirely enjoyable. In fact at times it was a nightmare. But it was a
great experience, from which I learnt a lot. I’ve had some really good feedback
on the event, and all of the competitors and judges seemed to enjoy themselves.
Which, in the end, was my main aim going into the whole thing.
(Note: I’ve written an article
about the Champs for the RLSS magazine, which should appear in a few months
time.)
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