Hello Nipper families,

Even though Dan Andrews didn’t ease restrictions on the weekend, we are still very excited to finally have some news for you regarding the upcoming season & Fairhaven nipper program.

Hopefully many families have already renewed memberships, but for those who haven’t it might be time to push play on that!

We certainly do plan to run the main program, starting as usual on December 27 and running into the first week of January.

The details surrounding Comp Season remain up in the air, but there will be no pre Christmas carnivals & Cosy as we know it looks to be off. As a result, the main season is fairly condensed, with the first week dedicated to the main sessions & the second week, largely dedicated to skills & comp training for those kids who are interested. These sessions will be weather & tide dependant.

There will almost certainly be some further minor amendments to the program, but we will communicate these changes as they come to hand. Whilst the usual Lorne Shield during the main program is looking unlikely, we do hope to run a friendly of some sort over the course of the summer. At this stage we felt that the most important information to convey was program start & likely finish dates.

In terms of the program itself, we plan to run all age groups from U6 to U13, but due to group size restrictions related to COVID, we will be capping each group at 20 kids (20 boys & 20 girls each age group), on a first in basis. In the event of an over subscribed age group, preference will be given to previous Nippers. We are also looking to make some minor amendments to duration of sessions as well as session location for the younger kids U6-9, in large part to separate groups physically a bit more & stagger start times, as suggested by LSV. The U6-U9 groups will thus likely run at the river mouth.

The important message at this stage is to let you know that registrations will open as planned on November 1, and given that this is a month late, we would be grateful if people could register as soon as possible so that we can make plans based on numbers on the beach.

In terms of parent helpers, you will notice some changes on the form as sadly, due to COVID restrictions, the famous Nipper BBQ is looking unlikely, as are face-to-face merchandise sales. So at this stage there is no BBQ or Merch roster, but we will still have a Merch role option, as helpers will be needed for click & collect, with details TBA. We do however, perhaps unsurprisingly, have some new roles related to LSV COVID guidelines and they include a COVID officer for each Age Group who would be responsible for things like hand sanitiser and also some dedicated helpers for board cleaning, with a daily roster for that that, so any help on that front would be much appreciated.

With regard to gear collection, in the interests of avoiding large crowds, we won’t do a formal gear collection this season but rather supply on an ‘as needs’ basis via the age groups, and also deliver the towels this way. For new Nippers we will be in touch and arrange collection of a gear pack, with further details to follow about this. Ideally this season, if your child has a rash vest that fits, we would be grateful if you would use it, but if your kids have grown out of theirs, we will be there on morning 1 to manage that and supply as needed.

The other issue we face is the renewal of swimming proficiencies, with capacity limited currently by the fact the public swimming pools are closed to groups. We are hoping that this will change over the coming weeks and will advise accordingly. We have however adjusted the due date of the swimming proficiency (currently set somewhat optimistically for mid December) and understand that at this stage, it cannot yet be done. We just have to cross our fingers that pools open as LSV aren’t softening on the “no swim form-no water” policy.

There will be further information coming out of course, but for now that is probably the most important information covered. Please reach out though if you have any questions and we will do our best to answer them. We still have Nicole behind the scenes working hard and she is also able to respond to questions regarding membership and renewals.

Contacts

Nipper queries:
Kirstin Charlesworth – [email protected]

Membership and Nipper queries:
Nicole Clarke – [email protected]

Kirstin