Review of the year 2024-2025

Frankie Sinnott2025-08-27T11:43:16+00:00August 27, 2025|News, Uncategorized|

Our big news for this academic year was a change of Name. We are no longer Warrington Youth Rowing and its associated regional names. This myriad of names was very confusing, and problematic for our office crew and fundraising team. We are now All Aboard Youth Rowing (AAYR), a name that hopefully encompasses our aims and image. We also adopted a new logo that was designed by a student at Priestly College; this logo is now displayed on all our new kit.

We also took the opportunity to re-launch our website. Our new site is full of information, including the impact of our work and highlighting the opportunities that may help us to secure future funding. As part of this process, we commissioned a new video, and this was produced by Prism Studios a local Warrington outfit. The result is a brilliant video accompanied by the music of Coldplay and their track Speed of Sound. The band were as helpful as ever and as well as contributing with the costs they put an extract of the video on their socials, which attracted over 2 million views!

September is always an exciting time of year and this year we were delighted to be joined by a number of new schools. This means that we could potentially be boating over 400 children per week, across our six North West based sites. This is a fantastic achievement and is testament to our hard-working team. It is all held together by Jen Hinds in the central office; she does sterling work keeping all the plates spinning. We were joined by Adrian Stores and James Crowley this year to look after sustainability and funding, currently and going forward. Henley Royal Regatta Charitable Trust have made it clear that their level of funding is going to have to reduce, due to the rise in numbers of outreach schemes they are supporting across the country. Naturally they want to support as many of these schemes as possible, but the pot of money is only so big, and it needs to be spread more thinly. This makes the work of our fundraising team even more important to secure our future.

Whilst we continue to grow, the financial pressure on schools becomes more apparent and this year we suffered the highest ever level of session cancellations, some of them at unacceptable short notice. The reasons for these cancellations are mainly staff shortages, a lack of minibus drivers or available vehicles.

In October Liverpool John Moores University bestowed an Honorary Fellowship on Richard Sinnott. This is the highest honour that the University can bestow, and it reflects the work that is done by AAYR and the high esteem that it is held in.

In November we had our annual fundraising dinner at The Mere Court Hotel, and we were joined by Beverly Scott Heron as our or guest speaker. Bev is a keen supporter of our project and as the Principal of Sir Thomas Boteler C of E High School, she is well placed to illustrate the benefits of our project. The event was a great success, and we also managed to bag a couple of thousand pounds to put in the fundraising pot.

In the Autumn, the North West Rowing Community sadly lost Graham Miller, he was a stalwart of the Chester Rowing community. At his funeral part of the donations were donated to AAYR. This has enabled us to provide a trophy for the youngster that has made the greatest progress during the academic year. This year the trophy went to a young man from Marsden Heights High School, and his improvement was credited to attending the project at Agecroft Rowing Club.

We strengthened our group of trustees in the winter with the addition of Richard Davis-Boreham. Richard has a rich history of working in sport and worked for Sport England, amongst other in the past. He is currently Strategic Director for Greater Manchester Moving and as such brings a great deal of experience to the team.

In January of the new year, we once again hosted our indoor rowing championships. This event was supported by Henley Charitable Trust and British Rowing; we are very grateful for the help they provided. The invaluable help of Birchwood High School, in providing their sports hall also ensured that we had a successful day. We tried a new format and split the competition into two groups, one in the morning followed by one in the afternoon. This enabled us to have more competitors, but in a more relaxed atmosphere. We started slightly late but finished ahead of the projected finish time and had packed up by 4pm. Over 400 youngsters entered and rowed their hearts out, it was gratifying to hear from the coaches how many of them achieved PBs. The relays demonstrated teamwork and we even had staff races, which attracted a very loud vocal support from the youngsters!

Normally we would have taken a team to NJIRC, the pinnacle of indoor rowing for youngsters. Sadly, due to problems beyond their control, the event didn’t happen this year. It did though become a virtual event, and thousands of youngsters took part. It was well supported by our schools with some of them entering large numbers of rowers. North Liverpool Academy did very well by winning a relay silver medal.

Adrian, our Sponsorship and Events Fundraising Manager started the Oarsome Business Club. This is a group of businessmen and women who meet on a regular basis to exchange contacts and ideas, as well as supporting AAYR. From this initiative we devised a Boat Race Challenge and invited local businesses to take up the challenge of rowing the distance of the boat race on an indoor rowing machine. Hopefully we will be running this initiative in future years.

We also had Chris Farrell running in The London Marathon. After a few administrative issues Chris managed to complete the course in a very respectable time and raised a considerable amount of money for AAYR.

James has also been very busy and is collating feedback and statistics from the participants and schools taking part. This will then be used to strengthen future fundraising bids.

The May half term saw our sites hosting our holiday rowing camps. These are designed to encourage our young rowers to join their local rowing clubs and move forward in the sport. Some of our former youth rowers have gone onto bigger things. Next year’s Junior Captain at Northwich is a fine example, having started on the Youth Rowing Project at Northwich. One of the current Warrington Rowers has just landed a scholarship at Shrewsbury School, which will be a life changing event for her. We still have Ellie and Iffy studying in USA. Whilst home on summer holiday Iffy managed to race at The National Rowing Championships with Warrington RC and win a gold medal!

Our regatta in June is quite rightly the climax of our year. We were delighted to see over 70 quads racing on the Mersey, at Warrington Rowing Club. After the chaos of a few years ago this event now runs well and is a unique and interesting format.

In July we invited a dozen of our ex-Youth Rowing athletes to attend a summer rowing camp at St Edwards School in Oxford. The criteria for the invite was that the youngster had been on the Youth Rowing scheme, had joined a rowing club and are still active in the sport. The course was free, and all accommodation and meals were provided by St Edwards. The youngsters, accompanied by Jen Hinds and Gill Laidlaw, had a great time. They visited Dorney Lake, Leander Club and had time in Oxford. Many thanks to St Edwards, this was a fantastic opportunity that our team thoroughly enjoyed.

Every year of this project is different, and it continues to grow in numbers, influence and stature. We are, though, starting to find our groove. There are many highlights, of course there are also some lows, but we try and keep on top of them. This project wouldn’t run without our fantastic coaches, sadly these days too many to mention, but thanks to you all. We also have a large number of volunteers, from Trustees to race monitors and they all make a large contribution to our overall success. Special and big thanks to Richard Kong who has been looking after the books since we started, he has decided to stand dwn at the end of this year. He is going to be replaced by Alyson Ashcroft, whose daughter Ruby is one of our ex-Youth Rowing pupils. Our professional staff just about keep their heads above water, firefighting, plate spinning and moving forward are the name of the game, but they love every minute of it!

Our main sponsors, Henley Royal Regatta Charitable Trust and British Rowing, are indispensable and without their continued support we would not be in the position that we are now. We can definitely say that since we started several thousand children have experienced our wonderful sport. Thanks to all the above.

Richard

CEO All Aboard Youth Rowing

Support Chris Farrell in The London Marathon

Jen Hinds2025-01-09T16:20:51+00:00January 9, 2025|News, Supporters|

We are incredibly excited to announce that Chris Farrell, Head of Community at British Rowing, is going to be running The London Marathon in aid of All Aboard Youth Rowing this April!

Chris is a great supporter of what we do, and the impact it has on our local community so we couldn’t be more delighted that he’s doing this for us.

We can’t wait to see Chris’ progress as he starts training in earnest this month, and of course to cheer him on in April.

If you would like to support Chris’s efforts, which in tun massively supports us, please donate what you can right here!

DONATE NOW!

The AAYR Boat Race Challenge

Jen Hinds2024-12-13T15:16:14+00:00December 13, 2024|Events, News|

BOAT RACE CHALLENGE

Mirroring the distance of the iconic Boat Race on the River Thames (6,778 metres), All Aboard Youth Rowing invites you to take on an exciting challenge that combines fun, teamwork, and a powerful cause!

We are looking for companies or groups of people that want to challenge themselves and support our fundraising campaign.

The details:

4 people per Team.
Prizes and merchandise on offer.
We provide the rowing machines and full briefing on a prearranged date

This is an excellent team building activity for your staff! AND your participation will help young people across the region. 90% of our beneficiaries are Pupil Premium students and our programme really does transform lives!

Entry fee is £200 per team of four. Additional fundraising is encouraged from participants! The more we raise, the more young people we can help!

Interested?

Let us know interest and book in NOW. Adrian Stores 07831 713003 adrian@allaboardyouthrowing.org.uk

AAYR Indoor Championships! Can you help?

Jen Hinds2024-12-09T14:12:46+00:00November 25, 2024|Events, News|

Our next All Aboard Youth Rowing Indoor Championships will take place on Thursday 16th January 2025 and will host Year 8 and 9 students from the 43 schools which participate on our programme. And we need your help!

This event provides students with the exciting and unique opportunity to compete for their school in an individual and a team (relay) race.

A fantastic experience for the young people, it relies heavily on a huge number of volunteers.

“Helping today has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done! Seeing the excitement and pride in those children is priceless! I’ll definitely be helping again next year!” (Volunteer from our 2024 event!)

There are loads of ways you can help – from helping to set up the rowing machines to supporting and cheering on a young athlete – and it’s such a great thing to do!

If you can help us on the day, please let us know! No experience necessary!

TOP TIP: If you’d normally be working on that day, check if Employer Supported Volunteering is something that’s available at your place of work!

CAN YOU HELP ON THE DAY?

ALSO… Sponsorship and partnering possibilities available for all budgets.

Enquiries to: adrian@allaboardyouthrowing.org.uk

OARSOME support from Bennett Briegal

Jen Hinds2024-12-13T16:06:12+00:00November 4, 2024|News, Sponsors, Supporters|

Specialist law firm Bennett Briegal LLP has always been a staunch supporter of local community initiatives and in 2022 became the first corporate sponsor of All Aboard Youth Rowing. This Charity gives disadvantaged young people access to the sport of rowing with the aim of positively changing their lives.

Partner Mark Briegal has been rowing, coaching rowing and umpiring for many years and is a lover of the sport. He has always been keen to make rowing more widely available as it can (incorrectly) be perceived as elitist, but at a club level certainly is not. Warrington Rowing Club, where All Aboard Youth Rowing started in 2016, is far removed from most people’s perceptions of what a rowing club might be, yet has produced Olympic champions.

Bennett Briegal has renewed its generous sponsorship to the Charity which now runs its school engagement programmes from rowing clubs in Warrington, Birkenhead, Salford, Runcorn, Northwich and Leek.

All Aboard Youth Rowing provides weekly rowing sessions for pupils from schools across the North West. It works with over 40 state secondary schools. 90% of the beneficiaries are Pupil Premium recipients and the results have been nothing short of incredible.

The sponsorship will see Bennett Briegal branded on various activities at the Charity as well as membership to the new business to business networking forum called the “Oarsome Club”.

More information on Bennett Briegal’s CSR policy: Mark 07973 283678; or AAYR: Adrian 07831 713003.

History Update 2022 – 2023

admin2024-09-02T10:45:42+00:00August 3, 2023|News|

The new academic year that started in September 2022 was yet another step forward. Greater Manchester Youth Rowing, based at Agecroft Rowing Club sprang into life. Else where it was a case of sustaining and growing our current sites.

The schools in Warrington, some of them now seven years into the project, soon got to grips with things and most of them where active by early October. We lost two of the schools for various reasons and they took a year out but promised to return next year. We did, though, gain two new schools in the shape of Penketh High School and St Gregory’s Catholic High School. The coaching team at WYR is now well versed in the way we do things. They continue to impress with their dedication and willingness to adapt and improvise. The coaching team at WYR was bolstered by the addition of a British Rowing Grow Coach in the shape of Quin Dunne.

Action on The West Float Dock continued at a pace with plenty of action on the water. North Liverpool Academy increased their sessions to three per week and three other schools increased their sessions to twice weekly. We were delighted to be able to introduce two new schools to the Mersey programme. South Wirral High School and Dixons Broadgreen both joined the fold during the spring term. Our student based coaching team at Mersey are performing well and are always up for a challenge, especially as they work on a commercial dock. I’m sure we will all miss the navy ship, that has now moved and was an interesting feature on the skyline.

The river Weaver saw plenty of activity with local schools continuing to participate and utilise the modern facilities at Northwich Rowing Club. The enthusiasm of the schools in Northwich is always rewarding to see and unsurprisingly they did very well at the Youth Rowing Regatta in July. Winsford High School capped their year by winning the Roger Chicken Trophy as the best performing school over the year. The number of schools increased as we lost one but gained Hartford and Rudheath. Kev Jump leads a well-established group of coaches at Northwich, and they have developed a very inclusive and caring style that works well with our youngsters.

Agecroft Rowing Club now play host to Greater Manchester Youth Rowing, and it is interesting to see the youngsters working alongside athletes that are on the GB pathway. Six schools eventually signed up with five of them coming from United Learning, a large trust with schools all over England. Our coaches at GMYR are by in large young adults and some of them are on the GB pathway. Its great to see these coaches passing on the skills that they have been learning, whilst being coached themselves by GB coaches!

The popularity and growth of Youth Rowing carries on and we have started planning for our next site to be based at Runcorn Rowing Club. Onward we march!

Rocking the Boat, the outreach conference that we help to organise with London Youth Rowing and Henley Stewards Charitable Trust took place in October and I’m delighted to say that we played a major part, organising several speakers. Scott Whitfield from LJMU was able to highlight his work and his study into our work and I’m pleased to say it was a big hit with the audience. Rocking the Boat 3 is in the planning stages.

We managed to hold our two Youth Rowing competitions this year, despite a teachers strike on our original regatta date. The indoor competition was held at Birchwood High School on 25^th January. We had our biggest entry to date with 375 young rowers taking part. In July we eventually held our regatta with a slightly reduced entry due to a teachers strike on the original date. We were pleased to welcome along Siobhan Cassidy, Chair of The Boat Race Company as a guest and she was delighted to see so many youngsters taking part in a regatta for the first time. It was a radically altered format and in general it worked well. Knutsford and Winsford were the winners on the day.

Based on the results of the indoor competition we were able to select a team to take part in the National Junior Rowing Championships at The Copper Box Arena in London. All four of our areas were represented and we sent the largest team to date, comprising 40 rowers and 35 adults.

Henley Stewards Charitable Trust continue to be our principal sponsor and we are very grateful to receive this cornerstone funding. They also give us valuable assistance at the time of Henley Royal Regatta, and this enables us to invite school leaders to attend the regatta and experience what is possible for their youngsters.

The Boat Race Company have also provided funding and we even got a mention on the BBC with their live coverage of the Boat Race.

Our old girls Iffy and Elle continue to do us proud with their rowing scholarships in the USA. Iffy at Tulsa University and Elle about to start at Washington State.

Indoor Rowing Championships 2023

admin2024-08-30T13:47:19+00:00February 7, 2023|News|

The fifth Indoor Rowing event took place at Birchwood Leisure and Tennis Complex on Wednesday 25th January 2023.

Participants from all four rowing programmes – Warrington, Northwich, Mersey and Greater Manchester – took part. For Greater Manchester, this was their first experience of the event. There was a total of 372 youngsters representing 23 schools. They raced as individuals in a timed race of either 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 minutes depending on age group and also took part in a 4-person relay team competing over a distance of 2,000 metres. The event was a huge success and everyone had lots of fun as can be seen in the photos.

Big thanks go to the volunteers, coaches and Trustees who supported the event and ensured it went without a hitch.

Video – Indoor Rowing Competition 2022

admin2024-08-30T13:47:33+00:00February 12, 2022|News|

Held at Birchwood High School, nineteen schools participated in the WYR Indoor Championships. There were participants from schools in Warrington, Merseyside and Cheshire.

Indoor Rowing Competition 2022

admin2024-08-28T12:07:29+00:00February 12, 2022|News|

The fourth Indoor Rowing event took place at Birchwood Leisure and Tennis Complex on Thursday 12th February. It was the first such event since before the pandemic and the first to bring all three youth rowing programmes – Warrington, Mersey and Northwich – together to participate in the same event on the same day at the same venue.

A total of 280 pupils from 20 schools attended. The races included Year 8 Boys and Girls, Year 9 Boys and Girls and Year 10 Boys racing each other on rowing machines (Ergos). There was also an event for pupils from our SEND schools. School staff, Youth Rowing coaches and volunteers encouraged and cheered on their charges who, though fiercely competitive, had great fun. The biggest cheer of the day was for the adults’ race between school leads, coaches and Trustees.

The event concluded with a series of relay races, which allowed the students to show off the skills they’d acquired throughout the winter whilst training in the Gym. As ever the results of the relays came down to the Formula 1 style change over; these pit stops require students to demonstrate a high level of team work and cooperation.

The event could not have happened without the support of our wonderful team of Trustees and coaches. There were also a large team of volunteers who gave up their time to make the day the great success it was.

Special thanks to Dan Hethering of British Rowing, Birchwood High School for the use of the school Sport’s Hall, LiveWire for the use of the facilities at Birchwood Leisure and Tennis Complex and St James Wealth Management for their financial assistance.

Our next event is Warrington Youth Rowing Regatta on Wednesday 6th July 2pm to 6pm.

View from the Launch November 2021

admin2024-08-28T12:47:28+00:00December 3, 2021|News|

It’s been a while since my last newsletter, things have been very busy at WYR with lots going on. I will outline our plans for the future below, which I hope you will find as exciting as I do.
I can begin by saying that the whole Team have had a couple of get togethers. Our first one being a training session for all the Trustees, Volunteers and Coaches. It was a valuable session and one of the few chances we all have to get together; as well as undergoing training, many tales were swapped and experiences shared. Our most recent event happened in mid-November and was our annual fund-raising dinner at Mere Court Hotel. A great time was had by all and the support from the wider rowing community was very much appreciated. Steve O’Connor was our main speaker and he enlightened a spell bound room with tales of the great work that Fulham are doing with the prison service amongst their other activities.
Sadly, Covid saw off our competitions this calendar year, but we have plans in place to make sure they return in 2022. Our indoor competition will once again be at Birchwood High School on Thursday 27th of January. Schools, please make a note of this date and start booking transport and making all other arrangements. A very early guess at timings would suggest 9.30am till 2.30pm. The main aim of the Event will be to pick our year 8 teams to go to London for the National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships on Friday March 4th. We will select three teams for this trip, one from WYR, MYR and NYR. We may also send a SEN team, if we can make the finance and logistics work. As well as the year 8 competition on the 27th of January, we will also run races for other year groups, so please feel free to bring them along. This will be a big event for the youngsters, we hope to have up to 30 schools and 450 students taking part.
We will be ending our school year with a regatta on Wednesday 6th July, on the River Mersey at Warrington Rowing Club. This is for all of our schools and should be a great occasion, the rowers can invite friends and families to come and watch their newly found skills. It will start at 3pm and finish at 6ish depending on the race schedule.
I am delighted to report that our new home for Mersey Youth Rowing is working very well, we now have ten sessions a week from a mix of Liverpool and Wirral Schools. We are hosted by Liverpool Victoria Rowing Club and they have been most helpful allowing us the run of their club during the day. Interestingly, all of our coaches at MYR are students and this was a bit of a leap of faith, but I am very impressed with the way they conduct themselves and impart their knowledge to the young rowers.
Northwich Youth Rowing got going with schools from all over Cheshire joining Knutsford, who were able to make a start last year. We are still talking with a number of other schools from the area and it is hoped more will join us soon. Northwich Rowing Club have embraced this project and are the perfect hosts. Their coaching gang are all veteran rowers and as with the students at Liverpool Vics they delight in creating bonds with the youngsters that enable them to make the sessions enjoyable. In the last couple of weeks NYR have just taken on a group of teenage Afghan Refugees; it takes great skill to get through to them but the smiles and fist pumps make it all worthwhile.
Our expansion plans are ongoing with our new base. In September 2022 we will be establishing Greater Manchester Youth Rowing which will be based at Agecroft Rowing Club. This is a good fit for our growth plans, Agecroft are a club that we know well and their base in Salford is well positioned to serve local schools. We are in the process of establishing a coaching team for GMYR, we are still a few short so please let me know if there is anybody interested.
Warrington goes from strength to strength and benefits from having a bit more history than the new sites. Getting going at the start of the academic year is much easier as they know what is involved to make the most of the project.
Warrington Rowing Club have benefited from having a steady flow of new junior members transfer from WYR. One of the girls from the 2nd year of the project has just finished 5th in GB Junior Sculling Trials and looks set for a fruitful 2022 season. Her colleague, also from WYR has just signed a Scholarship to study in the USA. More promising athletes are following in their footsteps.
During the summer of 2021 we tried to run a summer camp, with varying degrees of success. Next year we are going to modify the camps and pick 10 youngsters from all the schools at each site. They will be selected for the camp with the expectation that they will be interested in joining the host club’s junior section at the end of the course.
We also continued with our ongoing programme of Coach Education during the summer of 2021. Another batch of new teachers are now qualified as BR level 2 Session Coaches and some of them went onto complete their RYA Powerboat Course as well.
Our much-trumpeted study with Liverpool John Moores University has at last started. Some of the coaches and school leads will by now have had an email from the academics running the study and indeed, the first interviews should be taking place this week. Fingers crossed we should have some valuable data in a couple of years.
Ben and I have been heavily involved, with London Youth Rowing and Henley Stewards Charitable Trust in a project called Rocking the Boat. This was a video-style conference event that was intended to highlight the outreach work going on in the country and encourage more people to get involved. Feedback indicates that it was well received and we are involved in plans for next year. As part of this process Ben and I have been involved with other schemes around the country, lending a hand with our experience and knowledge of the last few years.
I will close by reminding you about ‘Easy fundraising’, if you don’t already support any other cause, please list Warrington Youth Rowing. It will cost you nothing but will be a great help to us.
Richard
07970796917 richard@warringtonyouthrowing.org.uk