WHOOSH Swim School - Adult Swim

Hi my name is Lisa Chapman. Thank you for visiting my website and finding out about my Swim School.

I recently got married and am now known as Lisa Hart - it is my husband Adam Hart that helps me to run Whoosh Swim School. We have a daughter Xanthe and a son Cody who were both born in a birthing pool and havent been out of water since!

I believe that a good swim school is one that understands and gives a personal touch to every one of its pupils. I feel I can offer this with the knowledge and experience I have gained from the 20+ years I have been swimming.

For the past 3 years I have been working with children at a day nursery and I enjoy the work immensely. I like to see a child progress and grow as a person; I will definitely bring the skills I have learnt in the last 3 years of working with children into the work ethics of Whoosh! Swim School.

To enable you to understand my background and how this can benefit you or your child learning to swim, I have written about my swimming career from my first swimming lesson to competing in the Olympics. I am very proud of what I achieved - it does go on a bit but I hope you find it an interesting read.

Thanks
Lisa Chapman Hart

Some newspaper clippings from Lisa's career
[Click to enlarge]

From Non swimmer to Olympian!

I was just six months old when my mum first put a set of arm bands on me and let me bob off round the local swimming pool. My mum was a keen swimmer herself competing at club levels, so she felt it was important that I learnt to swim from a young age.

By the age of four I was already showing promise and my swimming teacher recommended that I join Hastings Seagulls swimming club. When I first enrolled Jack Letts the Head Coach said to my mum: “She’s going to be a swimming star”.

With Hastings Seagulls I competed in Galas and was at Sussex Counties level by the age of 8 when Jack Letts started to call me “a little speedboat.” My first major win came when I won my first Southern Counties in the 100m and 50m Butterfly where I broke both championship records and Qualified for the Under-12’s National Championships at the tender age of ten.

I was finally allowed to swim at National level when I turned 11, but only in a relay race where the team I swam with missed a medal position by coming fourth. By now I was in a daily training regime swimming twice a day to push myself harder and raise the bar a little. I knew I was going in the right direction as this year I broke a record held by Commonwealth Games Silver Medallist Karen Pickering.

At the age of 12 the training I had put in started to pay off and in the Sussex Counties Championships I won 5 Gold medals in 5 races and broke three county records. There was no stopping me as I became a teenager and had the most important year for me breaking over 40 records and almost rewriting the Sussex County girl’s and woman’s record books. Many of these records had been held for over 20 years. I won 19 Cups, 33 Gold Medals, One silver and One Bronze. At Southern Counties level I also broke championship records in the 200m Freestyle, 100m Breaststroke and 200m Individual Medley and qualified for nationals once again.

All this success helped me increase my FINA points which rank you in your age group throughout the UK. This lead to me being selected to compete in the Olympic World Youth Games which were held in Moscow. I was the youngest member of the squad to represent Great Britain and it was a great experience to take part in my first swimming competition in another country. I was also now a member of the GB junior squad at the age of 13.

The competitions still came thick and fast and at 14 I travelled to Italy to compete in the Three Nations Junior International competition. I also competed in the Speedo Schools International this year winning the 200m Individual Medley and taking the record formally held by Susan Rolph. I also qualified for the European Junior Championships in Moscow where I came 8th in the 50m Freestyle. A big achievement for a 14 year old.

Over the next two years I entered countless competitions and won many medals both here in the UK and worldwide. At the age of 15 I travelled to San Diego for my first senior GB team. I competed at Three Nations in Cambridge coming home with 3 silvers, 1 bronze and 2 fourths and then Six Nations International in Germany coming home with 2 gold’s, 2 silvers and 1 bronze. I then competed at the European juniors in Dunkirk and just before I turned 16 I competed at the Millennium Commonwealth Youth Games, where I came home with 3 silvers. I also broke the Junior British and English records for the 100m Individual Medley and competed on the World Cup tour with the GB squad in Stockholm and Paris.

At the age of 16 I decided to take a break from my professional swimming career as I needed to see what life was like for a teenager without the constraints of a very busy schedule.

The Comeback

But my passion for swimming overtook me: I missed the water, the competing and the adrenalin rush. The turning point was watching the Commonwealth Games held in Manchester on the television.

I had to find myself a coach that would get me back to the standard I was swimming at before I quit and fast. I hadn’t been in the water for nearly two years. I spoke with one of the managers of the GB squad and they pointed me in the direction of Ian Armiger of Loughborough University. Within months I had moved to Loughborough to live by myself for the first time and dedicate my life to swimming. I was 18.

After many hours of training and brushing up of some bad habits I started competing again doing Speedo Grand Prix, where I qualified for Nationals in Manchester.

I was very proud of my speedy return to swimming and proud of the progress I was making, but this was all soon to be crushed on my journey back from Manchester. My mum told me the devastating news that my father had Leukaemia. They hadn’t told me as they knew I wouldn’t compete if I knew.

As you can imagine this was the hardest news and situation anyone could face but my father told me that I had to keep my head high and carry on with my plans with my swimming career. This made training even more difficult as for the next year I was training all week and returned to my family home only at weekends to spend time with my dying father.

Things got even worse as later in this year I broke my hand and couldn’t compete at the European Short course Championship that I had qualified for earlier that year at the Nationals in Manchester.

With this amount of bad news and bad luck I tried my very best to keep my head high and I got back to training hard focussing on my legs as my hand had still not healed.

The Olympic Trials came and I came 4th in the 100m Freestyle which secured my place on the GB Olympic team for the 4x100m Freestyle relay. I was over the moon.
At the end of May of 2004 the Olympic Team travelled out to Cyprus for the preparation camp for the upcoming Olympics to be held in Athens 2004. However I chose not to attend and this decision could have had me taken off the Olympic Team but they were very understanding as more bad news came the morning the team left.

This was the call that I was dreading to receive from my mother. My dad was to come home from hospital as there was nothing more they could do for him and we expected the worst. I immediately drove from Loughborough to my family home to see him. Two weeks later on 9th June 2004 my dad passed away from Leukaemia I and my whole family will miss him for evermore and I thank him for the help and support he gave us.

After this bad period of my life I threw myself into my training and towards the end of July the Olympic team travelled back to Cyprus for a further two week preparation camp and then straight on to the Olympics in Athens. We finished 6th in the 4x100m Freestyle Relay. This was a great achievement for me and a dream come true to compete at the Olympics.

Following the Olympics in December 2004 I competed at the European Short Course in Vienna where I broke the 100m Individual Medley English record that still stands to this day. In 2005 at the commonwealth trails I broke the British record for the 50m Butterfly and made the preliminary commonwealth team for 50 metres freestyle.

I am exceedingly proud of my achievements both as a swimmer for the GB team and an individual. The lessons I learned during those years have helped to shape me as a person and I am truly looking forward to this next chapter in my swimming career.

Adam Hart

Adam is the organ grinder of the business. He organises everything for Whoosh! and will do his utmost to answer any questions you may have.

Here is a video of Lisa swimming at the Olympics in Athens 2004. Lisa swims the last leg of the relay.