Portsmouth Northsea’s £20,000 fundraiser challenge creates real ‘sense of community’ amongst region’s biggest swimming club

The largest swimming club in the area are bidding to raise money to plug the gaps caused by the pandemic and three national lockdowns spanning over seven months in total.

The News reported a few weeks ago that the club have set themselves an ambitious goal of raising £20,000 by March 31.

At present, they have raised £17,838 with a week to go.

Of that, £8,000 has been donated by Sport England - but Northsea only get to keep that cash if they hit the £20,000 mark.

So far, more than 250 supporters have donated, with pledges ranging from many of £5 and £10 to two - Rajeev Janagal and Mark Spofforth - who have pledged £500 each.

‘We’ve had an amazing response,’ said Parfitt, one of two full-time employees - Lee Baldwin is the other - among Northsea’s 12-strong army of coaches.

‘It’s very much a sprint - we have four weeks to either raise the money or not, you can’t extend the date.

‘Apart from raising money, the Crowdfunder has really created a sense of community.

‘We’ve always tried to keep the swimmers involved in doing different things (during lockdowns).

‘We said right at the start that if we don’t keep on engaging with our members then we’re going to lose them.

‘We’ve got swimmers aged 7-8 to our Masters swimmers of 50-60 years old, and everyone has got involved to create that sense of community.

‘I have been so impressed.’

Swimmers have been raising cash via a series of fitness-related challenges.

For example, Joseph Kelly has been completing 1,111 skips every day before going to school.

Cathay Hawkes is cycling 450km during the month, while Northsea chair Marieta Candal is attempting to complete 1,500 sit ups.

Brothers Sam and Neil Redman are aiming to do 3,000 burpees - an exercise involving squat thrusts and standing - between them.

One of the club coaches, Ella Hamza, has set herself a challenge of 500 sit ups, 500 squats and 500 press ups.

Elsewhere, Joseph Green is attempting to complete the distance of the Three Peaks Challenge - around 23 miles - by walking up and down the stairs at his home.

Northsea’s strength and conditioning coach, Tom Company, is also taking part - his challenge is completing 2,000 kettleball swings.

With the lifting of restrictions, Northsea swimmers can return to outdoor open water swimming activities next Monday. Under-18s are due to return to indoor pools on April 12 and over-18s on May 17.

The club’s elite open water swimmers will be travelling to Arundel as that is the nearest outdoor heated pool to Portsmouth.

Some members have been helping to do cleaning work at Hilsea Lido, as that will also be used when guidelines allow.

‘It’s been a really tough year,’ said Parfitt. ‘We have had to become adaptable.

‘We have done squad fitness sessions via Zoom - at least that way we’ve created a sense of a team who can do some things together.’

A Sport England grant of £10,000 during the first lockdown was a big help to Northsea, as was the furlough scheme.

‘Our main two outgoings are pool hire and staff costs,’ said Parfitt.

‘We obviously had no pool costs during lockdowns and we were able to furlough 90 per cent of the staff - all our coaches are paid.

‘If we hadn’t been able to do that, I’m not sure we would have survived to be honest.’

Running a swimming club the size of Northsea, who boast 250 swimmers taking part in 80 squad sessions per week across four pools in Portsmouth, is not cheap.

‘Our pool hire costs are hundreds of thousands a year,’ Parfitt said. ‘There’s hundreds of hours of training a week, the costs significantly add up.

‘The Crowdfunding scheme will massively help us, it will help us get back on our feet, but it’s certainly not the cure.’

Parfitt is expecting the club can start charging full membership fees again from May, while he is waiting on Swim England guidance as to whether Northsea can hold any fairly lucrative Open meets in the coming months.

The governing body are allowing Level X racing to take place, though. That is where swimmers race against the clock in their own pools and times are fed into a central database with those from swimmers at other clubs.

‘There’s talk of regional and county festivals,’ said Parfitt. ‘I’m confident something wil go ahead.

‘Normally the season would have started in October and we’d be going through to early August - we always have the last two weeks in August completely off.

‘Normally we’d be competing at least once a month, sometimes twice.

‘It’s a long season.’

To donate to the Northsea Crowdfunder, visit https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/ and search for ‘Keep Portsmouth Swimming’.