Established in 2015 by College’s then Chair of Council, Charlie Taylor (Fr 1982), the Taylor Scholar program supports and encourages senior students in continuing to engage significantly and meaningfully with College life after graduating. The aim of the program is to increase the diversity and depth of the College experience.
Taylor Scholars develop and implement a new special interest project or continue and evolve an existing project, related to any aspect of College life that will benefit the College community.
Lucy Fenwicke (Fr 2019) is one of these scholars. Lucy grew up in Armidale, NSW, attended The Armidale School, and is studying a Bachelor of Business & Bachelor of Law at the University of Technology Sydney. She tells us more about the Swimming Project.
Tell us a little about your Taylor Scholar project
My project is all about boosting participation in swimming and creating a safe and fun environment to pursue passions in fitness. The project is currently running once a week with a training session at Victoria Park on a Tuesday morning. We train for one hour, simply swim some laps and enjoy ourselves. I am currently working towards organising the first ocean swim which I hope to do next semester. The group has cultivated an interest from more than 80 students and has regular swimmers join every week.
Why is it important to you?
Swimming has always been extremely important to me, I believe it is one of the greatest sports as anyone can do it and it is great for not only fitness, but rehabilitation and your general overall wellbeing. I feel at Drew’s sometimes students can be disheartened by the sheer calibre of all the athletes and do not participate out of a fear of not being good enough. I wanted to create a program that any person was able to enjoy and have an opportunity to compete in swimming without this fear and feel comfortable and encouraged.
What drove you towards this project in particular?
My idea for the project came from my time as swimming captain at Drew’s. In 2020 when I was secretary, we held tryouts for the Rosebowl and Rawson competition and had over 70 students trial. However, only 16 students make up the team every year meaning many students miss out on an opportunity to keep swimming. I feel there is so much talent at Drew’s and I wanted to create a program where individuals could train and continue their passions for swimming outside of the competitive college circuit.
What do you hope to achieve with it?
My goals are not necessarily quantitative, I would simply like to boost participation and enjoyment of swimming for students at Drew’s. Ideally, I would like to have between 10-20 swimmers training each week and have roughly 30-40 students participate in the ocean swim if I were to measure the success of my project numerically.
Any advice for someone thinking about applying for St Andrew’s College?
My advice would be to simply go for it and put yourself out there.
In terms of doing a Taylor Scholar project, I would suggest choosing a project you are passionate about as I feel this gave me a clear direction as to where I wanted to go with my project and exactly what I wanted it to look like.