A JUNIOR rowing club is appealing for a new training area to cope with the rapid increase in young people taking up the sport.

Hinksey Sculling School hopes to find a new gym to store and use its training equipment as its increasing popularity means it is outgrowing its current home.

The issue is more problematic when the squads of more than 100 boys and girls are forced to train indoors in the evening in winter.

At present teams use the gym and canteen area of The Cherwell School, for which they say they are grateful, but it is not ideal for rowers competing in national races.

Director of rowing Amelia Wright said the club was worried it might not be able to keep up such a high standard of training with its current numbers.

She added: “We have young people that are really talented and can compete at a high level but we do not have the facilities to bring them up to the same standards.

“We train almost every day of the week and our club has grown in size enormously with young people from all over the county coming.

“The Cherwell School has been amazing, but we feel now that we need a space somewhere, like an empty warehouse, where we can set up a base and train.

“It’s not a complete crisis yet but we are worried for the future.”

The club said an empty warehouse of storage space would be suitable and that it would pay rental costs. It added it could place temporary buildings on a site to be converted into gyms.

The club has members aged 11 to 18 and offers lessons for beginners. Its outdoor sculls and training centre is at Godstow, near Oxford, and was originally set up in 1998 to involve those without the financial means to take part.

It has 140 paying members – the bulk of whom are 13- to 16-year-olds – including pupils from Wheatley Park, Cherwell, Oxford Academy and Matthew Arnold schools.

Men’s captain Edward Hayden said the club was “tiny” when he joined four-and-a-half-years-ago.

The 17-year-old, of North Hinksey, added: “I have seen the club grow so much and it’s great. But as athletes we are trying to compete at such a high level and it becomes harder when you don’t have the facilities to use. A training space for ourselves would really help us.”

Women’s captain Lottie Marshall, 18, of Jericho, added: “We use the gym and canteen in Cherwell and because we’ve grown it’s too small.

“It makes it harder when competing with private schools and training for national contests.”

For more information, see hinkseysculling.org.uk