Profile

Different Strokes Wellington (DSW) is a swim club based in Wellington, New Zealand. Our club is LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgendered, Intersex) friendly, and we welcome everyone whether it’s your first time in the pool or you’re an experienced swimmer.

The club was originally started in 2008 under the name Wellington Gay Swimmers. The club began with the express intention of creating a safe, welcoming and competitive space for LGBTI swimmers. The name was changed to Different Strokes Wellington (DSW) in 2010 to be more inclusive of swimmers of all genders and identities.

We competed first together as a club at the World Outgames in Copenhagen in 2009, with 5 swimmers. Following that, the Club became much more formalised in preparation for the 2011 Wellington Outgames, writing a constitution and electing officers.

We’ve benefited enormously from our highly experienced, friendly and encouraging coaches. Our first coach was Brett Newell (2011-2012), followed by Paige Crimmin (2012-2014), Casey Glover (2015), Gareth Kean (2015-2018), Tim Fraser (2018-2021) and currently we’re coached by Andre Kudaba (2021-).

We have a friendly rivalry with the Auckland LGBTI swimmers: TAMS. Since 2012 we’ve run a small swim meet alternating between Wellington and Auckland – see this page for more information about that. In 2016 this meet was incorporated into the Proud 2 Play Event in Auckland. We also keep in touch with the Australian clubs, and were very pleased to welcome a contingent from the Melbourne Glamourhead Sharks at our annual meet in 2015. (We don’t mind that they won nearly every race…)

We’ve had DSW swimmers represent us at the World Outgames in Antwerpen (2013) and at the 3rd Asia-Pacific Outgames in Darwin (2014).

We organise occasional social events too!