Holiday Junior Rowing Courses 2024
Summer Courses have ended for 2024!
This year saw an amazing attendance for the eight weeks of summer rowing courses held at Falcon Boat Club. With over 220 attendees, the majority of which were beginners, there was much laughter, fun, and rowing skill development being experienced by all present.
The Summer Courses will hopefully run again in July and August 2025. If you are interested in attending one of these, and have not already attended a course, then please sign up to the mailing list using this form.
This page was last updated on 30th August 2024.
In the summer of 2023 we coached a record year with over 160 students attending our courses. In 2024 we broke through that number with over 220 juniors attending through the eight weeks of courses held. Plans for the 2025 courses are now underway, and updates will be posted here as and when the information is available. In the meantime, if you have any questions please contact the Junior Coordinator.
Thank you to all who attended in 2024, and we hope to see you and any new visitors next summer, 2025.
Overview of the courses and how to get involved.
Each course runs over a single week, Mon to Fri, in the summer holidays for two hours each day. This could be either 10am-12noon or 12noon-2pm. You are welcome to sign up for more than one week if you like. If enough people of similar ability show interest in a particular week, we may add an additional 2.30-4.30pm course, but this will be according to demand as well as coaching and safety cover availability and is not guaranteed. Equally, if we only have a few wishing to attend from a range of abilities, we may combine sessions in order to maximise the opportunities available.
The courses are run in groups of 8 to 16, and we arrange groups by experience. This means that we can take all abilities, including complete beginners. We can accommodate friendship groups, but only if the experience of the juniors matches up. For example; if there is a complete beginner who has a more experienced friend wishing to join them on the course, the more experienced will have to join the beginner's group, but this cannot be reversed so that the beginner joins a more experienced group.
All parents/guardians will need to sign a consent form stating that their junior/s is/are able to swim at least 50m in light clothing. This is a pre-requisite of taking part. Please note that the courses will inevitably involve a certain amount of capsizing and immersion in the river - this is unavoidable.
The course costs for 2024 are £130 for current Falcon Members and £160 for non-members. While participation at all the days of the course is preferred, we understand it is not always possible. However, the course fee is for the week and is non-refundable whether or not all days are attended. For this cost, your junior gets 10 hours of intensive coaching across a week, plus a Falcon summer course t-shirt. (Note: only one t-shirt per person, not per course attended. Additional t-shirts can be purchased separately if wanted).
We advise you to sign up early as the places are limited to 16 athletes per course. Places are assigned on a first come first served basis after which we put people on a waiting list. If you are on the waiting list we will keep you posted as to whether a place becomes available. Failure to pay by the deadlines provided will mean the place will be released to the next on the waiting list. Details will be on the sign-up form when it becomes available. Information about the courses will be sent out approximately 4 weeks before (if practical) including how to pay, what to bring, where to go, etc. while the timetable for the week will be released once a course is full, or about 2 weeks before whichever is earlier.
If a course is not full, we can still take bookings up until the night before, as long as parents/guardians have completed a booking form and payment prior to the start of the course. However, so close to the start, if a course is not visible on the booking sheet, it will have closed and the waiting list will also be unavailable.
Please see the pdf "Overview of Falcon Boat Club Junior Summer Courses", appended at the bottom of this page, for more information on what the courses entail.
PLEASE NOTE: we calculate our expenditure based on the number of participants in each session and book our coaching staff accordingly in advance. While we understand that sometimes last minute changes may occur, we have to have a payment policy and cancelation policy in place to make sure that we are able to deliver our courses to the highest standards, and pay those who are providing their expertise to both coach your junior, and keep them safe. Details of this cancelation policy will be available on the booking form.
The money we make during the summer courses goes directly into funding our Junior Squad which is now beginning to create outreach possibilities for those from a disadvantaged background.
