My name is
Chris Elliott and I’m a 2nd year Computing student at Kingston University. I’m also a member of
the KUSU Sub Aqua Club, where I
teach as an Instructor. As a club we’ve been branching out from our main activities
of training students and have begun trying to find ways to do something
positive for the community.
Our big
project last year was the Underwater
River Clean, where, with the assistance of several other clubs as well as KUSU Volunteering, Be A Champion funding and outside
agencies, we were able to pull off a great event. But we’re not done yet.
Another idea we’ve had going is to run taster sessions for local youth groups
etc. In diving circles, we call them “Try Dives”.
Our club runs
a Try Dive every time we start a training schedule, usually at the start of
each Semester, for our brand new recruits, but obviously it was going to be a
little different if we started to teach potentially much younger people. What
we needed was a Try Dive where we could get some young people involved but could
rely on them to be kind to us (for that you can read behave!).
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| Getting ready! |
So I
approached the Commanding Officer at 328 Squadron
of the Air Cadets – Kingston’s Squadron, to see if they might be
interested. I chose the ATC because I was a Cadet and a member of Staff there many
years ago and I figured they might be a good fit. The ATC is an organisation
that, while it promotes the Royal Air Force, is also about providing training
and leadership experience that will be useful in civilian life. I thoroughly
enjoyed my time in the Air Cadets and this was a chance to put a little back.
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| Underwater! |
The C.O. of
the Squadron was keen and we soon organised a day to meet at New Malden leisure
centre where the Try Dive would take place. Members of the Sub Aqua Club met up
there early on the day so we could prep and talk through what we’d be doing in
the pool. Our Diving Officer Tom was
keen for us to teach a couple of basic skills in the water and then have some
fun with the Toypedoes provided by the KUSU Volunteering department and
some of the pool toys supplied along with the equipment by Aquanauts, our local Dive shop.
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| I am OK! |
The session
itself went really well, with us splitting the cadets into small groups and
getting all of them into the water at once. I taught the Squadron Adjutant and
his son, doing some basic skills like Mask clearing, Reg recovery and DV
retrieval. The rest of the session, we played catch with the Toypedoes, swam
through hoops and did loops underwater. Both the Cadets and our own club really
enjoyed the experience.
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| Swimming through hoops! |
Running the
session helped us to learn a lot about how we ran the sessions and how we might
need to do it differently next time. I particularly enjoyed seeing the young
people getting to try out a sports activity that they wouldn’t normally get the
chance to do and seeing how much they enjoyed it.
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| Group photo! |
