Aimee joined our club in January 2009 and immediately impressed the coaches with her enthusiasm and ability, not to mention the commitment in travelling twice a week from Bristol to Highworth. Her first competition at St Albans in May, gave her a fifth place against much more experienced divers and it became obvious this was a diving star in the making.

In August 2009, Aimee’s parents took her to a Talent Identification Assessment Day in Plymouth. It was not surprising to anyone at the Club that she was offered a place in Plymouth Diving’s Elite Junior Squad and sadly her last training session with us was on August 19th. Since the beginning of September, she has been travelling three times a week from Bristol to Plymouth to train alongside World Champion Tom Daley and the Elite Junior squad. Aimee is keeping us updated on her training and this is her story:

Hi everyone, hope you're all OK!

I'm having a great time at Plymouth and doing work on some new moves. I've been doing 2 and 1/2 somersaults from the 3 metre and working on my twists.
Just before Christmas the Club had their Club competition and as it was my first time I competed in the novice group but came first! I had to do 6 different dives on the 1m and 3m. We all went to the Christmas disco after which was good fun.

In February I competed in my first National competition, the Armada cup. There were loads of girls from all around the country in my group. Andy Banks at Plymouth wanted me to have a go to give me a bit of experience so I did the 1m and 3m again. I dived quite well and came 27th out of 37th on the 1m and 29th out of 37 on the 3m.

I've now got to work on getting my difficulty up and then I should start to move up the rankings. I stayed down in Plymouth with my family while the competition was going on and even went toboganning with Tom and Tonia which was great fun!

I'm now working towards age groups and elite and will probably have some more competitions coming up again soon. I'm still training 3 times a week and just about managing to keep up with all my homework but sometimes it's hard to get up in the morning after a late night!

Hope you're all having a good time at Highworth and hope to see you all again soon!,

Hi everyone.

I just wanted to keep in touch and let everyone know how it's going at Plymouth.

My first day was on Saturday September 5th at 10.15 am. My first session was a dry land session with Tonya Couch and Brooke, after this we went to the pool and trained with coaching from Sally (Freeman). The next day I had to be at Plymouth by 9.00 for a 4 hour session with Fito (Guterriez – former Mexican National Champion), this was a mixture of dry land training and pool training. I found out that I am on a "fast track" to Junior Elite which means that when I can complete 1 & 1½ somersaults in all four directions then I will be part of the B group of divers at Plymouth.

On Monday I arrived at training at 6.00pm for land training with the club’s 2 Junior elite divers, Sianish and Kayleigh, at 7.15 we moved to the pool and are joined by Tom Daley for our pool session.

Yesterday I arrived for dry training at 10.15 and worked out with Tom (Daley) and Tonya (Couch)! We then moved to the pool where Tom helped me do my first inward 1½ somersault off the 3 metre board. Training finishes at 12.30.

Had my photo taken with Tom and Tonya (now on my facebook page)

Had to get up early today to get to Plymouth by 9.00am. Trained with all the club’s Junior Elite divers for the 1st 2 hours then spent the next 2 hours with Fito working on perfecting my 4 different 1½s.

I am absolutely loving it,