From A to Sea – The Southern Star Sea Swimming Podcast · The Southern Star

Ciarán Seawright - The Water School

·24 min

Ciarán Seawright speaks from the water school at Pearsons Bridge near Cale Kill. He says the school carries forward the work his late father, Clive, built, and he treats that as a living legacy rather than a neat memory. He goes back to his first sense of water in the mountains, where the sea was out of sight but streams, puddles, and his brother's ponds were always close by. His father was always taking him to water and, as he puts it, helped build that love in him. When Siobhan Cronin asks how he learned to swim, he remembers Damanwy swimming pool. His father used to take his oldest sister to horse riding lessons in Damanwy and bring him to the pool at the same time, where swimming lessons began. He also remembers holding onto his float in one of the dams his brother built near home. From there, the talk turns to the difference between pool swimmers and open water swimmers. He says long years of watching people in both settings taught him to notice what changes in the sea. People float higher in seawater than in freshwater, he explains, with heads staying up and feet rising toward the surface. That matters in breaststroke, where he says about 90 percent of the power should come from the legs. It also changes what front crawl looks like, because the arms do most of the work while the legs trail behind. Siobhan Cronin brings him to the school side of the work and asks whether swimming should be taught more in primary school. He answers yes, without hesitation. He says about 20 to 28 primary schools come to the water school during the year for lessons. That fits the national curriculum, but he thinks too little weight is given to it. Some schools bring one class one year and then nothing for a couple of years after that, which leaves too many children without enough time in the water. He calls the number of drownings in the world scarily high and gives a range of 235,000 to 320,000 a year. The conversation stays grounded in the practical work of teaching, watching, and repeating the basics. It leaves Ciarán Seawright sounding like someone who knows that a local water school can hold memory, skill, and safety at the same time.

As heard by us

A family water-school story that ties swimming technique to place and memory.

The piece follows Ciaran Seawright as he speaks from the water school he runs at Pearsons Bridge near Cale Kill, where family history and practical teaching sit close together.

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Why you'd press play

If you like sea-swim talk with actual teaching detail and no fuss, this will do.

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