The Winner of - Club of the Year goes to...

"We would like to nominate Seren Dŵr as club of the year 2022. This year has been one of an amazing recovery… and we think establishment of our club as an exciting and innovative club for both youth and adult paddlers. 

Seren Dŵr is a slalom and competition club based at Cardiff International White Water (CIWW). Our main club sessions are run on Tuesday evenings during school terms alongside Canoe Wales Performance and Development squad sessions. We have enjoyed strong links with CIWW since the start of the club and are able to borrow boats, paddles and equipment to support beginners at our club Tuesday night sessions, which is fantastic!

Covid left our club in a difficult place in 2020-21. Our main coach left the club and we also lost a significant number of our members. Once CIWW reopened in June 2021 and we could start club sessions again we had too few coaches to increase our membership and too few members to be an exciting and fun club… we felt we were trapped!

But now those times seem far behind us! This year has been really exciting… recognising that our lack of coaches was limiting us we started by training up our existing members – and especially our youth members – as coaches – with the help of support from The Outdoor Partnership (TOP). In the cold days of February 2022, we ran a BC Core Coach course for 4 youth and 2 adult members, and at the same time 1 youth and 1 adult member also qualified as Paddlesports Instructors. One of our more established coaches also did the Slalom Specific Coach training. 

Suddenly we had a group of keen coaches who could support and learn from each other! Since then those members have been coaching regularly for us, emphasising skilful paddling alongside having fun, and they are now really beginning to hone their coaching skills – in part thanks to a Canoe Wales grant for coach development. One youth paddler who did the Core Coach course – Ben Higson – now regularly coaches our youth slalom paddlers... He is an incredible role model for them all. Next steps are discipline specific coach courses (slalom and freestyle) and assessments…

With those new coaches and some dedicated volunteers – new and old - we’ve increased our membership to 32 active members ranging in age from 11 to late 60s; 38% are youth members, 41% are female and 50% are new since covid in 2020. We have four further potential members doing trial sessions with us and we expect our membership to continue its upward trend over the next few months. We’ve also hosted groups of beginners from other clubs and universities to give them experience of competing and training at slalom.

This year we ran a whole series of extra activities on top of our regular Tuesday training sessions. Early in the year these included a paddle round the Bay for ice cream, as well as training days for Div 4-2 paddlers ahead of competitions at both Symonds Yat and Llandysul. Club members found these really useful to ensure they were well prepared for competition and we had promotions for several members in K1 at these events. We also did C2 Div 4 races with various pairings including our coaches at both Llandysul events to continue building club spirit and friendly competition between members.

In May 2022 Seren Dŵr club ran the Cardiff Prem and Div 4 slalom events for the first time since covid. It was wonderful to see new young paddlers and the GB squad racing at Cardiff. A highlight for many members was seeing GB squad and Seren Dŵr club members Etienne Chappell and Megan Hamer-Evans paddling with the rest of the GB squads in the team runs. The Cardiff Prem is a major event to organise and required all hands-on deck from club members (alongside many extra helpers from nearby clubs – thank you all!). It was a great success and we were relieved that we made a small profit from the event.

In the summer we ran our own “summer of fun” for club members. A group went to the Llandysul River Festival where we had two further slalom training days and a club coasteering trip, alongside the two days of racing. We again had a youth promotion at this event, this time in C1. It was a fantastic event (big thanks to Llandysul Paddlers!). We also ran two very popular club trips to the Tryweryn, and for the second we teamed up with English club North Avon Canoe Club to ensure coach and experienced paddler cover. We certainly learnt that our youth paddlers can paddle hard – most of the adults had retreated to watching from the café by the end of Sunday – while the youth paddlers played on Café Wave! We also had a day surf coaching on Gower with help from the Welsh surf team who kindly brought coaches and boats for us to try.

Competition-wise this summer was also very successful for Seren Dŵr

Club members Etienne Chappell (U23) and Megan Hamer-Evans (U23) were both selected for GB squads, Eti in U23 and Megan won the U23 selection in April to win a place on the Senior squad. Megan being the first Welsh Female athlete to make the GB Senior team in 20 years. Will Coney was named reserve for the GB C1M Senior Squad. Both Megan and Eti produced some fabulous results. In May Megan won a silver team medal in the European championships, and Eti came 4th in Krakow in Extreme Slalom. Both went on to win bronze team medals at the U23 European Championships in the Czech Republic in August. Etienne won Silver at Extreme World championship. Eti then came second in the British slalom Final in October. However, towards the end of the season Megan decided to stop racing and has started to do some coaching for the Welsh Performance Squad.

This year we had seven club members racing in Prem. Two of our youth athletes are starting to chase at the heels of Eti and Megan. Sennah Nader-Humphries (J16) and Oliver Cooper (J18) had some fantastic results, and both raced and trained in the Alps this summer. Sennah was crowned J16 and J18 Welsh champion at the Graveyard Prem in October coming 16th and 14th overall and Oli also did fantastically coming 11th and 16th. Both Sennah and Oli have ended the year ranked 23rd in Prem in K1W and K1M respectively. We’re looking forward to cheering them both on as they continue to improve.

We also watched with bated breath as freestyle paddler Ben Higson won silver at the Junior World Freestyle Championship in July, and again in September as he became Junior British Champion. He’ll be another one to watch as he becomes a Senior paddler next year. Ben has been coaching and inspiring our youth paddlers since he did his Core Coach training with the club in February this year. 

In the lower divisions our most successful new slalom paddlers of 2022 are Riley Wilford, J12 (promoted from Div 4 to Div 3 in both K1 and C1; Riley has now been selected for the Regional Development squad) and Catherine Radburn, U23 (new entrant to Div 3 and promoted to Div 2 after 3 wins and now ranked 21st in Div 2). New club member Libby Young, J16 is currently ranked 1st in Division 3. We feel we are starting to train the top-level slalom competitors of the future once again, but we know there’s lots of hard work to do to ensure our newer club members continue to compete and in time are promoted to the higher divisions.

In September, and again with support from the Outdoor Partnership, we ran a youth+ British Canoeing White Water Safety and Rescue course for 9 youth paddlers aged between 11 and 17 and 3 adult club members. TOP funded us to run this for 12 paddlers and so we invited youth paddlers from Cardiff Canoe Club (CCC) to train with us. This has opened a new collaboration between our two clubs, and we have since welcomed several of their club members to try slalom at our regular sessions. CCC have enabled our club members to attend their pool sessions too – its much nicer now the weather has got colder to be able to practice and learn rolling in a warm pool than in cold water at CIWW! And we have quite a few new members who need to learn to roll (especially as we need members to be able to roll before they take slalom boats onto the whitewater course).

Right through the year we have been running 3-week Introduction to Slalom courses for paddlers with different skills levels from beginners to experienced white water paddlers. These courses have been the source of most of our new members. Since October we have also been providing slalom sessions for local University groups allowing them to introduce their paddlers to competition and slalom. And with help from Canoe Wales Slalom Lead Coach Andy Kettlewell we’ve started to introduce freestyle training sessions for our members.

2022 really has been an amazing year for Seren Dŵr! 

We believe we have shown excellence in most of the categories including:

 • A club that embraces and supports the development of a wide range of paddlesport disciplines

 • Development of skill progression and enjoyment within paddlesport

 • Planning and maximising opportunities to broaden the skills and experience of club paddlers

 • A unique programme that has made a significant impact within the club

 • Joint initiatives with other clubs that benefit its members

 • Growth in membership within the club

What will next year bring? 

We want to provide unrivalled opportunities for youth and adult paddlers in SE Wales in the whitewater competition disciplines of slalom, kayak cross and freestyle. We want to continue to compete at the highest levels while supporting new and developing paddlers. Most of all we want our paddlers to find training and paddling with Seren Dŵr fun and rewarding! Our first priority is finding funding for more boats and paddles… as at present lack of equipment is the chief limit on our membership. 

And we will continue to do our usual club activities…

 • Run our successful Tuesday night slalom training sessions and weekend training days to support our developing slalom paddlers, both youth and adult.

 • Run a programme of broader paddlesports opportunities for our members including whitewater trips and surf. 

 • Run the May bank holiday Cardiff Prem and Div 4 race 2023.

 And we have additional big plans! 

 • For more collaboration with other non-competition clubs, like Cardiff and North Avon canoe clubs – whereby we share our skills and experiences and offer opportunities to members of each other’s clubs. 

 • To help our youth and adult members continue their progression through the coaching scheme with discipline specific courses and assessments, which will in turn help us build our membership further. 

 • To target local schools and universities to give paddlers experience of slalom competition and continue to grow our club. 

 • To run an additional Tuesday evening Div 4 at CIWW in March 2023 to give newer club members a taste of competition.

 • To start to provide a home for local freestyle competition paddlers and help provide freestyle training to youth and adult paddlers.

 • Take advantage of an extra Thursday night session.

Watch out on our Facebook page in 2023 for ongoing news of Seren Dŵr paddlers!