17 year old Cara Smyth from Dalgety Bay is part of the Scottish Disability Sport (SDS) Young Start programme that aims to encourage, support and help transition young para sports participants into teaching and coaching.
Cara recently completed a UKCC Level 1 swimming teaching qualification and is on poolside as a swimming teacher with Carnegie Swimming Club for around three hours per week. Cara also supports DSF swim coach/teacher Kay Maxwell at the Carnegie Leisure Centre during the weekly Get Out Get Active (GOGA in Fife) supported session for swimmers with additional support needs. Cara has become a most valued young Fife swimming volunteer.
Earlier this month SDS arranged a get together for the Year 2 members of the Young Start programme. Cara was invited along because she had missed out on this event in Year 1. I am reliably informed she made a very positive contribution to the session. Cara is well known in Fife for her bubbly, upbeat personality and not surprisingly her humour and relaxed demeanour went down very well on the night. So valuable was Cara’s contribution that she has been invited to attend the residential event that she missed in Year 1 of the programme because of hospitalisation.
Cara is a Fife College student and is out on placement two days per week. Cara enjoys her studies and apart from volunteering remains a very committed performance Para swimmer with aspirations of reaching as high a standard as possible in the year ahead. Cara is currently in the Carnegie ASC performance development white squad and training 10 hours per week under coach Barry McMillan. In addition this very committed young Disability Sport Fife member is learning to drive.
DSF is proud of its peer mentor volunteers and none more so than Cara Smyth. Cara is also a highly respected loyal Fife performance swimmer who will be heading to the east of Scotland at the start of the year with her Fife team mates for the SDS performance gala. Cara has achieved so much already in Para swimming but there is undoubtedly much more to come.
Photo: Cara Smyth centre; Caroline Baird MBE GB Paralympian left; Oonagh Aitken CEO Volunteering Matters
Richard Brickley MBE – President Disability Sport Fife