On Christmas Eve the popular Aberdeen City Council Food and Fun project hosted its Christmas party at Sport Aberdeen’s Beach Leisure Centre for over 120 children.
The project which is supported by Sport Aberdeen, Aberdeen FC Community Trust (AFCCT), Community Food Initiative North East (CFINE) and Police Scotland, was originally initiated to combat ‘holiday hunger’. Holiday hunger is a serious problem for children who rely heavily on their daily free school lunches that are not available to them over school holidays.
The project ran successfully in the Summer and October holidays in the St Machar, Torry and Northfield areas of the city, with over 6,000 free meals provided over this time. Produce and ingredients were provided by CFINE and prepared by Aberdeen City Council’s Facilities Management School Catering Service and CFINE’s Cook at the Nook.
The Christmas party took place between 9.00am and 1.00pm and gave the children the chance to take part in multisport activities at the Beach Leisure Centre and ice skating at the Linx Ice Arena, provided by Sport Aberdeen’s Active Schools Team.
Present across all activities to assist Sport Aberdeen’s Active Schools Team were AFCCT coaches and volunteers from Aberdeen City Council’s Communities team.
After their activities, the children were then provided with a warm lunch served up by volunteers, including Sport Aberdeen Chairman Colin Taylor.
Commenting on his involvement, Colin said:
“Sport Aberdeen is delighted to be involved in the Food and Fun Project and hosting the Christmas Eve event. Christmas can be a challenging time for many families, so it is important that all partners involved in the project offer support where we can.
“It has been great to see so many smiling faces today and Sport Aberdeen are pleased to be able to provide each child with a Christmas present of a selection box and free family passes for use at our facilities across the city. These will allow families to have fun and enjoy being active together.”
At the end of the event, the children went home with a donated present from Sport Aberdeen and a food parcel courtesy of CFINE to last the children and their families through the festive period.
A local teenage snowboarder was recently selected to take part in an invitational event organised by two time Olympic Snowboarder, Aimee Fuller.
Sixteen year old Abby Greig, who has been snowboarding at Sport Aberdeen’s Aberdeen Snowsports Centre for four years, received the unexpected letter alongside eight fellow female athletes for the Aimee Fuller TSC Invitational.
The invite came after a recommendation from Abby’s Go Beyond Park & Pipe coach, Euan Baxter.
The event which took place on 13 December at London’s Hemel Hempstead Snowcentre consisted of a warm up led by Aimee and an hour long session on the slope. This was followed by a series of interviews and a photoshoot with the athletes.
The whole event was documented by Sky Sports and broadcast on Sky Sportswomen on Tuesday 18 December.
This experience was the icing on the cake following a year of achievements for Abby who said:
“I really enjoyed the event, it was great chance to be able to ride with Aimee and all the other girls!”
2018 saw her come first in the Scottish Dryslope Open Championships and the Cairngorm Outdoor Championships as well as the under 16’s ‘Go Big or Go Home’ competition in Aberdeen. Aimee is also Sport Scotland’s overall Triple Crown Champion for 2017/2018.
Get active @ Jesmond, operated by local charity Sport Aberdeen, has been awarded an Excellent accreditation in the UK’s leading national, quality scheme for the sport and leisure industry.
The Quest Plus assessment noted the positive atmosphere in the centre and the evidence of a commitment to delivering customer service excellence.
It also remarked on the centre’s front of house which was presented to a very high standard and noted that staff were motivated to deliver a quality service.
Quest Plus demonstrates long standing and continuous high operational standards, as well as the positive impact the facility has on the local community.
Commenting on the award, David Selkirk, Director of Community Leisure Operations said:
“It’s fantastic that Get active @ Jesmond has improved and achieved this excellent standard of accreditation. Quest is a very thorough and rigorous process and the facility continues to go from strength to strength. As well as being voted ‘Centre of the Year’ for Scotland at the 2018 UK Active Uprising awards, this level of accreditation underpins the high standards and quality of provision at the facility.
“With January right around the corner, our venues have never been more accessible to the local community than they are right now. There really has never been a better time to get more active with Sport Aberdeen.”
A recent funding boost from Sports Leaders UK will be used to up skill and engage over 75 young people from schools across Aberdeen in Dance Leadership as part of Sport Aberdeen’s Active Schools programme.
Local charity Sport Aberdeen was recently awarded £5,700 from Sports Leaders UK to provide Dance Leadership training for 20 teachers from Hazlehead, Lochside and Bucksburn Academies, in addition to three Dance Development Officers from Citymoves Dance Agency.
As part of the project, the newly trained Teachers and Dance Development Officers will deliver five Dance Leadership workshops across the city to over 75 senior pupils between January and March 2019.
Once qualified as Dance Leaders, these pupils will go on to deliver dance sessions to their peers and younger pupils in extra curricular clubs in their respective schools, thus helping to increase the number of pupils in the city being active.
Dance is one of the most popular physical activities for teenagers in the UK and is the perfect way to help young people develop and enhance their leadership skills whilst helping themselves and others stay physically active.
Graeme Dale, Development Manager – Active Communities at Sport Aberdeen said:
“We are delighted to have been chosen by Sports Leaders UK to receive this funding, with it having tangible benefits for the city. Working closely with local schools and City Moves, this funding will allow us to build both the dance tutor and dance leader workforce and ultimately get more children and young people taking part in and enjoying the benefits of dance.”
Designed with today’s education landscape in mind, the training courses, deliverable through a wide variety of subjects are designed to improve the vital skills and employability prospects of young people of all ages and abilities.
Sports Leaders UK Partnerships Officer, Fiona Kennedy, commented:
“Sports Leaders UK is delighted to support Sport Aberdeen to enrich their Dance Programme across the City. Our SCQF Dance Leadership qualifications provide a platform to engage and develop young people with all abilities and experience.
I believe the Dance Tutors will empower and inspire a passionate and qualified dance workforce who will become role models to a younger generation. We look forward to supporting all tutors, schools and community groups involved to ensure an excellent Dance Programme across Aberdeen.”
Sports Leaders UK work with over 2,000 organisations and 90,000 young people every year across the UK to upskill them through formally recognised leadership awards and qualifications.
A recent funding boost has allowed for significant improvements to be made to the provision of sustainable cycling across the city.
Adventure Aberdeen, part of local charity Sport Aberdeen, the city’s award winning community leisure trust, has received a total of £38,000 from Cycling Scotland and Aberdeen City Council, to promote cycling to schools, community groups and local businesses.
£18,000 has been awarded by Aberdeen City Council through the Civitas Portis Transportation Project and the Smarter Choices, Smarter Places fund, to make sure every 11 year old in the city can ride a bike.
Working with schools and young people across the North East, Adventure Aberdeen has noticed children in almost every p7 year group who don’t have the key skill for life. This project is designed to ensure that active travel and healthy lifestyles are made even more accessible for everybody across the city and that nobody needs to leave primary school without being able to ride.
In addition to this, £20,000 was awarded to Adventure Aberdeen by Cycling Scotland to facilitate the coordination of the Bikeability Scotland cycle training programme, which is designed to give children the skills and confidence they need to cycle safely on the roads as well as encouraging them to continue cycling into adulthood.
In addition to the funding from Cycling Scotland, Adventure Aberdeen received a further The Civitas Portis Transportation Project is a four year £3.2 million project led by Aberdeen City Council that tests innovative and sustainable urban mobility solutions in five European port cities; Aberdeen, Antwerp, Trieste, Constanta and Klaipeda.
Commenting on the recent funding, Sport Aberdeen’s Director of Healthy and Active Communities, Keith Gerrard, said:
“We are delighted to have secured this funding from Cycling Scotland and Aberdeen City Council. Sport Aberdeen is committed to creating opportunities, inspiring people and changing lives and getting children out and on their bikes from an early age is so important to ensure that this practice carries into their adult lives and helps move Aberdeen towards being the most active city in Scotland.”
Many schools across the city struggle to deliver regular Bikeability sessions due to staff shortages or teachers unable to give up class time. The money received from Cycling Scotland will be used to run Cycle Training Assistant (CTA) courses which will enable volunteers to deliver Bikeability Levels 1 and 2 in schools citywide and will combat these issues.
World Para Swimming European Champion Toni Shaw, was announced as a Learn to Swim (L2S) Ambassador for Scottish Swimming’s National Framework for Swimming in Scotland on Tuesday 13 November 2018 at Aberdeen Sports Village.
Toni’s swimming story with Sport Aberdeen began in 2002 at the age of one at the Beach Leisure Centre, as part of what is now known as the Aquatics Aberdeen Learn to Swim Scheme. From there she moved to Northfield Swimming Pool where she continued her swimming lessons before progressing to club level swimming with the Cults Otters.
Since her Aquatics Aberdeen days, Toni has gone on to be Team Scotland’s youngest athlete at the Gold Coast XXI Commonwealth Games and won six medals at the Allianz European Championships in Dublin in August.
Commenting on her achievement, Toni said:
“I am really pleased that swimmers with disabilities are taught in an inclusive environment. It has been great to develop as a swimmer and be seen beyond my disability, this has helped me integrate into a performance environment where I get to train alongside the likes of Hannah Miley.”
Contributing to her remarkable year, Toni was also named Junior Disability Sports Person of the Year at the Aberdeen’s Sports Awards 2018 on 4 October at the AECC, which is an event run by the Active Aberdeen Partnership (AAP).
Dianne Breen, Coached Programme Manager for Sport Aberdeen said:
“We are delighted that Toni has been named as a Learn to Swim ambassador by Scottish Swimming. She is an excellent role model and we are proud to see a former member of our Learn to Swim Scheme achieving so much at such a young age.”
Sport Aberdeen’s Aquatics Aberdeen deliver Scottish Swimming’s fully inclusive L2S framework offering a fully inclusive lesson programme with sessions for all age groups, from birth to Active Aging sessions with emphasis put on adapting lessons plans to ensure anyone with an impairment is able to take part.
In addition, Aquatics Aberdeen deliver specialist classes for small groups of all ages, abilities and disabilities at six pools across the city. These classes ensure children and adults with additional support needs can take part in the same pathway as mainstream classes, but with additional support and resources where required in an environment appropriate to their needs.
These specialist classes include; ASN, PASN, deaf awareness, autism friendly, transition squad, older beginners, everybody active, water confidence, private lessons and one to one lessons for people with cerebral palsy.
Sport Aberdeen, the city’s award winning community leisure trust, has launched the countdown to Christmas with the announcement that tickets are now on sale for their 2018 festive showcase.
‘A Magical Christmas on Ice’ will see the Linx Ice Arena transformed into a celebration of Christmas with characters coming together on Saturday 8 December.
The annual Christmas Ice Show will welcome back talented skaters from Sport Aberdeen’s Learn to Skate programme, members of local skating clubs and individual skaters from the National Ice Skating Association (NISA), to pull together a fun filled show packed with everyone’s favourite songs and stories inspired by the festive season.
David Selkirk, Director of Community Leisure Operations at Sport Aberdeen, said:
“Our homegrown cast and their dedicated coaches have been working hard to ensure a fantastic show this Christmas.
“The 2018 Christmas Ice Show is set to be a festive adventure for the whole family to enjoy, bringing together all of our favourite festive characters for ‘A Magical Christmas on Ice’.”
Sport Aberdeen will also be gifting 120 tickets to local children’s homes, looked after children and local schools, to ensure the festive spirit is extended across the city.
Sport Aberdeen is saddened to hear of the death of Adam Smith of Aberdeen Amateur Boxing Club.
Adam received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2015 Aberdeen’s Sports Awards for his many years of dedication to boxing in the City and the North East. Adam was also inducted into the Aberdeen Hall of Fame at Aberdeen Sports Village in November 2016.
Keen to develop the boxing club at Cummings Park Community Centre, Adam was for many years closely involved in sport development networks.
Bernie Reid, Sports Development Officer with Sport Aberdeen, said:
“I first worked with Adam in 2009. Always a perfect gentleman, he had both a tireless commitment to the Cummings Park club and a fundamental belief in the value of sport to inspire the young people of Northfield”.
Adam will be sorely missed throughout the boxing community, but his son, Leroy Smith continues the great work in the community served by the club.
Our thoughts are with Leroy and the all the family at this sad time.
Local rhythmic gymnast Louise Christie, was awarded a £500 grant from the Chris Anderson Fund earlier this year and is already beginning to see the benefits of her funding.
The Chris Anderson Fund, established in 1988, is administered by the Active Aberdeen Partnership (AAP) and exists to assist the development of talent in young people aged 8 to 18 who live in the Grampian Region.
The 18 year old first began rhythmic gymnastics at the age of five and has since trained at Sport Aberdeen’s Beacon Sports Centre.
Louise’s successful grant application has allowed her to fund a trip to compete in Bulgaria where she finished 4th overall. It also enabled her to attend a 7 day training camp in Norway where she was coached by retired Olympic rhythmic gymnasts and also pay for essential physiotherapy sessions to help with her overloaded calf muscles.
On top of this, Louise finished 3rd and 6th at the British Individuals tournament, 2nd overall at the National Grades finals in Stoke and defended her title as Scottish Senior Champion for the 2nd year in a row.
Speaking about the funding, Louise said:
“The grant has benefited me by supporting the opportunities that have arisen over the recent months.
“It enabled me to subsidise my costs to Bulgaria and Norway for a training camp that was an amazing experience. With the sport being self-funded there is a high cost to being successful.
“More competitions bring greater experience and with extra funding I can take another step nearer my goals.”
Keith Gerrard, Sport Aberdeen’s Director of Healthy and Active Communities, commented:
“The Active Aberdeen Partnership recognises that participation in sport and physical activity is driven by a whole host of talented individuals and groups. Louise’s achievements prior to and following receiving this grant are evidence of the hard work and determination to succeed that is key when selecting who receives this support.”
Andrew Lindsay, three time Paralympic 100m Backstroke medallist, was inducted into the Scottish Swimming Hall of Fame at the Scottish Swimming Awards on the 29 September.
The awards which took place at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Glasgow, acted as a double celebration of the achievements made by Scottish competitors in Aquatics events and also welcomed new athletes into the Scottish Swimming Hall of Fame.
Andrew was unbeaten for over 10 years on the international stage in his favoured S7 100m backstroke event between 1997-2007. He competed at four Paralympic games between 1996 and 2008 winning three medals, two of which were gold. Three out of the four medals won at IPC World Championships between 1998 and 2006 were also gold while his record at European Championships between 1996 and 2008 is exceptional; winning ten medals including five gold. A stalwart of the British team during this time, Andrew mentored a number of up and coming athletes including Jonathan Fox.
The swimmer who now works for Sport Aberdeen, spoke of his shock upon finding out about his induction this September:
“I was sitting reading through my emails late one Tuesday night when I read the message saying I was to be inducted and I had absolutely no inkling that this was on the cards. I was shocked.
“Apparently I was a good fit for the Hall of Fame in that I am a retired, multi-medallist who has competed at several Paralympics and European Championships.”
Sport Aberdeen’s Director of Community Leisure Operations, David Selkirk said:
“It’s fantastic that such inspirational and talented athletes work with us at Sport Aberdeen. Andrew’s achievements in his field speak for themselves and his inclusion in the Swimming Hall of Fame is recognition of this.
“Sport Aberdeen aims to create opportunities, inspire people and change lives and it’s safe to say that Andrew has and will continue to inspire Scottish Paralympic swimmers for many years to come.”
Andrew is keen to stay involved within the sport by imparting his years of knowledge onto up and coming swimmers as a coach, ideally within Sport Aberdeen.
Graeme Marchbank, Chair of Scottish Swimming, thanked all involved in the aquatic community for a successful year:
“The Scottish Swimming Awards once again acknowledge the outstanding successes achieved throughout the aquatics field from athletes and coaches to volunteers and local authorities, all of whom play an important role in leading our sport – a sport for all, a sport for life.
“Scottish Swimming has enjoyed great success over the past 12 months and once again we are delighted that there was so much to celebrate, and we look forward to 2019.”