Waterford Crystal Swimming Club

The original Waterford Crystal Sports & Leisure Complex opened in 1971, and was situated on nearly 20 acres of land in the ballinaneeshagh area on the Cork road, the Waterford Crystal Sports Complex, has a membership of two and a half thousand people employed by the Waterford Crystal firm. In addition, the club, containing both indoor and outdoor facilities, is open to the spouses and dependents of Waterford Crystal employees bringing the club’s total to approximately 10,000.

The facilities available at the club include a sports hall, sauna, gym, learner pool, a 25 meter 5 lane swimming pool, a lounge & bar, an athletics track, two tennis courts, pitch and putt course and six pitches for various games like soccer, rugby and hockey.

The swimming pool, used by 300,000 people last year, is the centre’s most popular amenity being the only public pool in Waterford city, it is used by all the schools in the city as well as by the spina bifida and the wheelchair associations for swimming therapy sessions with the disabled. As well as that the Irish life saving and water safety association use the pool for swimming lessons and water safety lessons.

Crystal swimming club was formed in 1971, originally to become a member you had to be an employee or an employee family’s member but now anybody with a love for this excellent sport can join. The club had a number of coaches over the years, the head coach for the last 33 years and even to this day is Brian Williamson (the boss), as he likes to be known as. He built on a small young club and brought it to highly competitive level using his experience and disciplined training sets with many swimmers originating and advancing through the ranks of our swimming lessons which provided a solid teaching base. The club operates on a purely amateur basis but still encourages all its swimmers to embrace and break through the pain barrier, Aim high, Achieve their goals, be a winner!