Aberdeen Dolphin Swimming Club is one of the oldest competitive swimming clubs in the North East of Scotland, having been formed in the early 1960’s.
It is a private, non-profit making club, affiliated to the Scottish Amateur Swimming Association and the SASA North District. The club is also a constituent member of COAST (City of Aberdeen Swim Team). The composite team was formed to bring together the most talented swimmers from its six constituent clubs, in order to provide swimmers with a higher level of coaching, to progress the swimmers to a greater level of achievement.
Originally called ‘Dolphin Swimming Club’, the ‘Aberdeen’ was added to avoid confusion when a Dolphin club was formed in Montrose. One of the main figures in the early days was Fred Gunn, the first Head Coach. Fred coached a group of children at the Bon Accord Baths in Aberdeen and he, together with the parents of those children, was the driving force behind the formation of the club.
Aberdeen Dolphin SC was the first local club where boys and girls swam together – previously clubs had been single sex. The existing clubs at the time trained on different evenings at the Beach Baths. However, when the Aberdeen Dolphin formed there were no free evenings. The club therefore began training at the new Summerhill Pool, thus creating a link with Summerhill, which carried on until recent years. In 2014, the club have a home pool in Northfield which is used for all club sessions from Junior Red right up to Gold Squad.
Club swimmers regularly excel at local, national and international level. Some have excelled in the top levels of the sport with the most recent being David Carry who took two Gold and one silver medal at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia. David also competed in two further Commonwealth Games as well as the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.