I talked to an old friend today. She grew up in a Lake Michigan town, and shared with me that everyone in her town had to learn to swim. She is a black woman not held back by fear of the water. One of her favorite sports? White water rafting. She shared how her husband went rafting with her once. He did fine, but being a non-swimmer, he just didn’t feel comfortable trying white water rafting again.

My friend told me that swim skills may not be too helpful in the rapids, but they really give you a level of confidence you wouldn’t have otherwise.

I’ve never been white water rafting, but it sounds like so much fun! Then there’s kayaking, canoeing, boating, sailing. . . not to mention scuba diving and snorkeling. The summer is of essence. What water sports are you going to partake of?

I heard that the Summer Solstice Swim Meet was this weekend. It was also the dreaded weekend of my daughter’s Open House, so we weren’t going. The Summer Solstice Meet is the big USA swim meet our local club, Great Lakes Aquatics hosts. It’s a weekend long event held in a large outdoor city pool. My kids competed in it a few times before they quit swimming.

The last Summer Solstice Meet I attended was four years ago. I wrote a post about it. Here it goes:

Tan and burning. flesh. everywhere.

My daughter swam first Friday afternoon and EARLY Saturday morning. She was the darkest person at the pool. I think there was one other (partially) black girl, but that’s it.

My son’s group was a lot more coloful than my daughter’s–as I’d expected. Most of us quit before her age? or Never started at all? The younger group may be a new crop, or a movement–only time will tell.

We were instructed to get to the pool at least an hour early for warm-up. Each child had a different approach to warming up. My daughter was busy socializing, hanging out in the diving area, a much smaller sub-section of the pool than the olympic sized lengths of the rest of the pool. She barely swam a warm-up at all. My son worked that whole 50 yard lane–warming up for the full 45 minutes alloted for his group today. He’s dutiful. I worried about my daughter’s lack of warm up and I worried about my son’s tiring himself out in the warm up. He’s the energizer bunny, though. . .

My middle daughter is not competing yet–but like piano, she seems to actually like what I’d want her to like–and she can float–the only one so far. She’s driven and (therefore?) gifted in swimming.

Swim culture. The first time we came to this meet was 2 years ago, when we were still part of the Kalamazoo Aquatic Club, (KAC). I thought the crowd was scary. I saw tie die t-shirts proclaiming, ‘I’m greatfully deadicated to swimming.’

Now: Older swimmers wear holey suits layered upon layer–teen boys with shredded, baggy, faded shorts atop floral speedos–still scary.

In my son’s age group, all the boys wear jammers (think bike shorts minus the padding).

Most of the (non-black) parents are too tan–very fit–with firm legs. Swimmers, too?

Everybody–even little kids in the 2ft section of the pool–can swim.

Cheering our kids on like prize racehorses–or greyhounds.

They keep going. Even after everyone else has exited the pool. Gotta feel like you accomplished something just finishing. Until they hand out medals and trophies to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. And you finished #41–on your best race.

Boo.

Keep up the grind, the training? The anerobic threshold? We’re considerably more relaxed this year than in the past–2-3 practices a week, when it used to be 4. Should do at least 5. . .

Our kids look great–toned, they can swim well–fearlessly–and don’t win at meets. Now what? I get swept up in the meet culture. Now these people are my people. Maybe I should compete. . .

Cullen Jones led a swim clinic yesterday in Reno with Rowdy Gaines and Jason Lezak. They were in Reno to participate in a fundraiser at Peppermill Resort Spa Casino. After their “Evening with the Olympians,” the swimmers spent an afternoon with the future.

The swimming greats came face to face with fear and fought back. Hopefully, they made as big an impact on the children in the pool as they did on the community of Reno at large in the fundraiser. The goal was to raise money to build a better swim facility. The old building where they taught the children was in disrepair.

It’s nice to see Cullen continue on his mission to teach the world to swim. That he brings in reinforcement is even better.

Doesn’t everyone go to gymnastics and have swim conversations?

So I was sitting at gymnastics one day talking about–what else? Swimming. I was talking with a friend from church who used to have a pool. She was quite athletic as a girl, and I thought she’d told me that she’d done swim team as a teenager. I was mistaken. She’d played basketball and softball, but said she loved swimming too much to compete in it. She did become a lifeguard in her teen years, however, and her 8 year old daughter is quite the fish.

She told me about going to the beach with her family one day and noticing a huge drop off in the lake after a sand bar. She warned her family about it, and proceeded to watch a boy fall into the drop off. The boy’s father tried to save him but was drowning as well.

My friend immediately went into lifeguard mode–some 20 years after her training. She told her husband to keep her daughter. She grabbed a couple innertubes and swam out to the drowning victims. She called to another person she saw at the beach to help her rescue the father and son. She described how the adrenaline took over and she had strength she didn’t normally possess. Her quick thinking saved both father and son’s lives. The man’s wife was so grateful she was speechless.

This story was in response to my concern that my thin daughter may be too small to actually be a lifeguard. My friend reassured me that adrenaline is a powerful force.

USA Swimming is releasing a new study that shows that non-swimming Blacks drown at a rate of 70%, Hispanics, 58%, while white non-swimmers drown at a 40% rate. The report cites the usual factors, lack of access, which is amplified in this recession. Pools are closing at an alarming rate in Black neighborhoods, and budgets to pay for lifeguards are also shrinking.

These horrifying statistics aside, we are really killing ourselves. The study cites that non-swimming black parents are the main culprit in the drowning rate. These parents can be so scared that they wouldn’t let their children take free swimming lessons.

I remember learning how to swim and leaving my parents behind. They were terrified that they wouldn’t be able to help me if something happened to me in the water, but they didn’t prohibit me from learning to swim. That’s the kind of faith and vision it will take for parents to let go of their fear and get their children the skills they need to survive. It’s ironic that parents doing the best they know to do to keep their children safe are actually endangering them this way.

Meanwhile, USA Swimming, Make a Splash, Project Josh, etc. are working as hard as they can to reverse the statistic. It is disheartening to see that drowning rate so high after all the work these programs do. I pray that these parents have the strength to move beyond their fear to do what is best for their children.