Competitive Swimming at Durham City is organised around seven progressive squads. The entry level squad, Bronze Squad, is the next step after a swimmer has achieved Stage 7 of the National Plan for Teaching Swimming. The top squad, NER Squad, contains swimmers who regularly compete in galas at County and Regional level.

Swimming is a technical sport and aspiring swimmers need to spend considerable amounts of time training within the pool. Swimmers spend greater amounts of time training than do athletes in other sports, particularly team sports such as football. This is reflected in the amounts of pool time available to our swimmers. Swimmers in Bronze Squad have 4.5 hours per week available for training and this increases to 14 hours per week for NER Squad. Whilst we do not expect swimmers to attend every session, 75% attendance or better should be the target for any aspiring swimmer.