TLA Sport

with Roger Jackson Please email full details to sport@thelocalanswer.co.uk

Three into one most definitely does go at Cheltenham Swimming and Water Polo Club.

The long-standing club, formed way back in 1887, are very proud of the fact that they are a multidiscipline club.

As their title reveals, the club offer swimming and water polo to their many members, but they also boast a well-established artistic swimming section, a section that was called synchronised swimming back in the day.

“The club are in a pretty good place right now,” said James Ross, a former Welsh international water polo player who has been chairman of the club for the past five years.

And the recently-turned 43year-old typifies the all-for-one and one-for-all spirit at the club with his commitment, energy and enthusiasm.

Ross goes above and beyond for a club he first joined as an eight-year-old because he actually lives in Andover in Hampshire, some 60-plus miles from Cheltenham. But the onetime Cleeve School pupil comes up to the club twice a week pretty much every week.

“I enjoy it,” he said. “The club have done a lot for me, I appreciate being given the opportunity to give something back to a club that have given me so much.”

Ross initially joined the club as a swimmer before joining the water polo section as a 13year-old.

He continued to swim – “You can’t play water polo unless you are a good swimmer,” he said – but it’s fair to say that water polo has been his number

James Ross, left, with coach David Taylor at the British Water Polo Championships at the Sandford Lido one discipline for the past three decades.

Water polo is a sport that Cheltenham have traditionally been very good at – they’re the current British League winners – and Ross enjoyed great success with them over the years both as a player and a coach.

He still plays for the 2nds if required and these days he also coaches the women’s team for whom his oldest daughter Lily, 15, plays.

But while water polo obviously takes up a lot of his time, his role as chairman means that he now has an over-arching view of the club, a view that he likes.

“The aim is to provide a pathway for people aged from eight to 80,” he said.

“We’ve got a strong masters section in both water polo and artistic swimming.”

Indeed they have because the masters water polo team, for whom Ross plays, will be competing in a national event in Liverpool in February and the masters artistic swimmers also compete nationally. And when Ross talks about a pathway for eight to 80-year-olds, he is actually under-selling the club slightly because Phil Jones, who has done so much for the club over the years and is a former president of Swim England, is still very much involved, even though he has just celebrated his 90th birthday. “He’s a life member,” said Ross. “He was reminiscing about the old days at his birthday party, the club are in his blood.”

And they’re a club who have come through the lockdowns of recent times in pretty good shape.

“Covid was clearly a challenge but we’ve come out of it well,” said Ross, who runs his own construction business. “We’ve restructured financially and we’re in quite a strong, stable position.”

That healthy state of affairs at the club owes much to the various coaches of course, of which there are about 30 across all the disciplines.

“We are very grateful to all the volunteers,” said Ross.

“From timekeeping to bookkeeping there are over 50 volunteers who regularly put time into the club to keep it running smoothly and successfully.”

So how long does Ross envisage staying on as chairman?

“I’d like to maybe do it for another couple of years,” he said. “It would be nice to hand over to someone with the club in a strong position.”