The Smolensk Center for Education for Children with SEN raises champions

The Center for Education for Children with Special Educational Needs in the city of Smolensk has been raising champions for many years – and this is not an exaggeration. From the age of seven, all students are actively involved in sports. There are classes in chess, checkers, athletics and swimming. By the end of the school, many graduates have more than one Russian championship behind them, however, the Center’s coaches note that the health of students, and not awards, is still in the first place.

About mentors

Swimming at the Center for Education for Children with Special Educational Needs is taught by three venerable coaches. Vladimir KOZLOV – Honored Coach of Russia. He prepared the champion and record holder of Russia in 2007-2013, the world champion in 2008. At the 21st Deaflympics in 2009, his pupil set two world records and won four gold medals.

Olga MUDRIAK, a coach of the Department of the Agency for Physical Culture and Sports, has been teaching swimming classes for deaf and hard of hearing athletes for more than twenty years, and is a swimming coach at school No. 3 in swimming. The youngest coach, Sergei MAKHNENKO, is a graduate of the Center and an active athlete, master of sports in swimming, member of the Smolensk region team and candidate for the Russian team. Sergey has been deaf since birth, so he knows from his own experience how great the role of a coach is in working with athletes with hearing impairment.

On the importance of swimming for health

The Center for Education for Children with Special Educational Needs works mainly with pupils with hearing impairments. And deafness, as the trainers note, is a violation, first of all, of the vestibular apparatus, coordination abilities, spatial and temporal sensation of reality.

Children in an educational organization begin to swim from the first grade, and at first training takes place three times a week. Swimming and therapeutic gymnastics in the water are invaluable for post-traumatic patients, hearing impaired and patients with disorders of the musculoskeletal system.

Cold water increases the body’s resistance to adverse environmental influences and contributes to the hardening of the body. Acting on the skin, water simultaneously increases the electrical activity of biocurrents, voltage, forcing nerve cells to work at full strength, and swimming increases the stability of the vestibular apparatus. According to the coaches, thanks to regular swimming lessons, even children with serious illnesses, such as paresis, begin to walk.

According to the results shown by the students, the children are divided into sports and health groups. In sports groups, children are already engaged six times a week in the pool and gym. Classes with deaf and hard of hearing children differ from ordinary trainings: instead of sound signals, they use light signals.

However, pupils of the Center often participate in competitions on an equal footing with ordinary children and even win prizes.

– Our athletes are on an equal footing with healthy participants. The guys are part of the Smolensk region swimming team. We call this the inclusive training process. And our children do not feel flawed anywhere, although they swim without hearing aids, – says coach Olga Mudryak.

Maxim: everything in life is for the better

Maxim Timashkov was born a healthy child, but at the age of three, due to a mistake by doctors, the boy lost his hearing. The child spent a long time in the hospital, he had an implant installed.

At the age of seven, Maxim entered the first grade of the Center for Education for Children with Special Educational Needs and began swimming. Maxim worked hard under the guidance of coaches Olga Mudryak and Vladimir Kozlov, his older friend and future mentor Sergei Makhnenko had a great influence on the boy.

The first success came to the young swimmer at the age of eleven: Maxim performed at the IV All-Russian Summer Olympics, completed the 1st category and was selected for the Smolensk Region swimming team (sport of the deaf). At the VI All-Russian Summer Spartakiad, held in the city of Salavat in 2018, he won four silver and two bronze medals.

For the first time, the athlete climbed the podium of the championship of Russia as part of the national team of the Central Federal District on May 3, 2018, having won one silver and two bronze medals.
Maxim went long and hard to receive the title of master of sports of Russia. On June 26, 2021, at the Russian Swimming Cup (sport of the deaf), he swam all the declared distances according to the required standards, and on December 29, 2021, the student of the Education Center Maxim Timashkov was awarded the title of “Master of Sports of Russia in Swimming”.

Now Maxim is in the eleventh grade, he admits that he loves to swim more than anything in the world. In the future, the young man plans to enter the university of sports and become a swimming coach.

Maxim himself treats life with great optimism and believes that everything in it is for the best.

Sasha: I’ll go for a prize

As a rule, children with hearing impairment have comorbidities. So, Sasha BOBROVA is hard of hearing, and, in addition, the girl has cerebral palsy, and in order to feel good, she needs to exercise regularly.

– When I don’t play sports for several days, it’s hard for me, I start to fall, crash into doors and walls. Regular classes help solve my problems, says Alexandra.

“Sasha is a workaholic,” says her coach Olga Mudryak. – She trains six times a week in the pool plus the gym. Sasha takes care of her health and goes in for sports, even while on vacation.

Serious illnesses did not prevent Sasha from becoming the silver medalist of the Russian Cup in the relay race and the bronze medalist of the Russian championship in the relay race.

In March 2022, the All-Russian Federation of Sports for Persons with Musculoskeletal Disabilities held the Russian Short Course Swimming Championship in Krasnodar. 188 athletes from 34 regions of Russia took part in the competition. Alexandra represented the Smolensk region. The girl entered the top ten strongest swimmers, taking 9th place at a distance of 100 meters on her back with a score of 1:22.48, and fulfilled the standards of a master of sports.
In the same year, in April, at the Russian Cup, she was selected to participate in the alternative Olympic Games.

From October 2 to October 9, the city of Sochi hosted the international complex sports competitions “Summer Paralympic Games “We are together. Sports”, in which about two thousand athletes from twelve countries of the world took part. Competitions were held in nine sports. 436 sets of awards were played. In a tough fight, Alexandra won fourth place in the 400m freestyle and fifth in the 100m backstroke.

– Sasha swam very well. It was more difficult for her than for everyone else: she was the only one with a hearing impairment,” says Olga Mudryak. – In addition, our athletes have not developed the skill to compete in open water. There are additional factors here: sun, rain, wind, waves. And even under all these circumstances, Sasha became the fourth! This is a great result!

“When we arrived, it was scary that I would not succeed,” the girl shares her emotions. – But I really liked the Olympics. Previously, I did not want to participate in it, but now I understand that I will definitely go again, but already for a prize.

Alexandra Bobrova says that since childhood she loves to swim. Now the girl is studying in the ninth grade of the Center for Education for Children with Special Educational Needs. In addition to sports, she loves literature, especially the works of Alexander Pushkin. At school, Sasha has many friends who support her.

Alexandra dreams of traveling a lot. In the near future – to visit St. Petersburg and Moscow. The athlete really wants to see the capital’s museums. After school, Sasha is going to enter the university of sports and continue to swim.

About learning and creativity

The teachers of the center try to create all the conditions for the students so that the children feel confident among other people and achieve new successes.

“We have wonderful children studying,” says Olga Mudryak. Our students speak well and write well. They have strict discipline: they understand very well that all student debts arising from frequent competitions must be promptly closed. This is the law for them.

In addition, the teachers of the school involve children as much as possible in all creative activities. The guys are engaged in dancing, arts and crafts, sign singing. And in all directions achieve impressive results. For example, one of the center’s students, Anastasia Lebed, will soon go to the Russian swimming championship in Saransk and the Morning Star competition among children with disabilities.

According to the coaches, now the Center needs open sports grounds. The gym is small with low ceilings and is not suitable for running and ball games:

“We don’t have enough basketball and volleyball courts. We have a very large area outside the window, and it is empty. And for health it is important that children can play sports and on the street.

We hope that the Center will soon have new equipped places for sports and wish the pupils new victories and, above all, health!

Earlier, we talked about how special children of the Smolensk region pass their final exams.