t the Pompey Park Pool, a group of students learns a vital swimming lesson: the back float.
“Now lean back! A-lean back!” sings David Woodard, their instructor and aquatics operations supervisor in Delray Beach, Fla.
The kids, nervous up to that point, recognize the lyrics of the popular Terror Squad rap song, and begin to relax. Smiling, they do exactly as Woodward says, lean back, and learn a skill that could one day save their lives.
In the aquatics industry, this swim class is rare. Not because of Woodard’s tactics, but rather because of the students in the pool: They are not white. Instead, they are black, Haitian, Hispanic and Middle Eastern. All told, more than half the kids in and around Pompey Park Pool are minorities.
With minority representation disproportionately low in swimming programs and black children drowning at a rate 2.6 times that of whites, it’s no wonder Woodard’s program has received attention from Florida’s Palm Beach County Drowning Prevention Program. Professionals say it demonstrates the key components necessary for a successful minority outreach program — minority students coupled with minority instructors, doting role models and a hefty dose of community support.
But Pompey Park Pool is an isolated endeavor. Indeed, many people of color, and a growing number of aquatics professionals, feel the industry has all but turned its back on minorities. Real or perceived, the problem is undeniable. In fact, USA Swimming, the sport’s national governing body, remains more than 80 percent white and less than 2 percent black, based on self-reported membership data. That’s despite a decade-long outreach program. The organization recently put that program on hold to determine why it failed.
Like the industry itself, however, USA Swimming has found that explanations — and solutions — are complex and rife with controversy. But while no easy answers exist, professionals from all walks seem to agree on one thing: If the aquatics industry hopes to reduce minority drowning rates, it must look beyond individual efforts and develop a unified, national approach that reaches out to people of every race, ethnicity and class.
Stopping the cycle
At the moment, however, aquatics finds itself in a chicken-and-egg conundrum. Because few minority children learn to swim, the industry can’t cultivate the next generation of minority professionals. Without those professionals, there’s no one to inspire a new generation of minority swimmers.
So the pattern continues — and minority drowning deaths mount.
Meanwhile, no one knows quite where to begin.
“Minority representation in the lifeguard service is low,” explains B. Chris Brewster, president of the U.S. Lifesaving Association. “Lifeguard agencies hire people who are good swimmers and teach them to be lifeguards. Learning to swim at the level required to be a lifeguard takes years of involvement in swimming.”
How can the cycle be stopped?
Individual programs have shown signs of success throughout the nation. In fact, many experts believe learn-to-swim programming must remain a county or city responsibility to be successful.
The industry’s largest learn-to-swim provider, the American Red Cross, thinks along those lines. “The strategy is on a national level, but the implementation has to be at a local level,” says Ana Correa, a communications and marketing officer at the Red Cross who also oversees its Hispanic outreach efforts. “It works so much better when there’s ownership, when it’s at a grass-roots level and the local communities are involved. The Red Cross cannot be just a national organization in Washington, D.C. It has to be neighbor helping neighbor.”
Correa says that in Phoenix, the Red Cross chapter successfully implemented water safety PSAs via the Spanish-language network Univision. Plus, the organization recently launched a sister Web site (www.cruzrojaamericana.org) to provide Spanish-language materials to its 850-plus chapters.
Indeed, thanks to such individual initiatives, dozens of cities and counties have brought minorities into the sport and organized successful swim meets that target black and Hispanic swimmers.
“You should see these meets,” says Gainus Wright, head coach of the Aqua Angels, a growing inner-city swim team in the Parks and Recreation Department of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “They’re packed. There’s a buzz in the place, and there’s so much energy, from the worst to the best swimmers. It brings tears to your eyes.”
Still for every Aqua Angels, there are as many local programs that began with a bang yet failed to maintain their momentum.
Jim Ellis, for instance, has run an inner-city program for nearly 30 years. His goal as head coach of the Philadelphia Department of Recreation swim team was to attract young, black swimmers to the sport. By the early 1990s, Ellis’ team was nearly 100 percent black and winning meets.
But Ellis is the first to admit that many hurdles still must be overcome. “There’s a lack of coaches who are willing to work in the inner city and who relate to the kids and their problems,” says Ellis, who is black. “There are too many challenges to deal with. The last 10 winters, we haven’t had heat. About 20 of our 40 overhead lights are out. That atmosphere doesn’t lend itself to a positive swimming environment.”
Despite the success of Ellis’ team, membership has lagged in recent years. Experts believe the reason programs such as this fail to keep their fires lit is because minority communities lack interest in the sport altogether. Ellis and Wright actively sought participants for their programs. The paradigm, however, needs to shift, they say.
Minority kids and their parents need to be the ones seeking them out.
Learning what works
Clearly, no quick fixes exist. From transportation problems to cultural stigmas, access issues to a dearth of role models, the obstacles are myriad. Equally as complicated are the solutions, but experts say employing certain tactics can help aquatics programs address the issues and stigmas keeping ethnic groups at bay.
For one, the industry must change its outreach methods. Professionals recommend selling water safety messages on the radio and at concerts and churches frequented by minorities. Encourage parents to take up swimming, too.
Most importantly, make sure you promote swimming the right way. “In black communities, we often associate sports with making money and signing multimillion-dollar contracts,” says Lee Pitts, founder of The Lee Pitts Swim School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a program that teaches minority kids to swim. “The kids are joining basketball and football to make money. If you promote swimming as a sport, there’s no association of money. We have to get the kids into swimming as a skill, not a sport.”
Researchers agree. “For many years, we learned swimming because it was a safety issue, a survival skill,” says Gail H. Ito, an assistant professor at Chicago State University’s College of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, who is researching the topic of minorities in aquatics.
“I think we’ve gotten away from that. It’s become a recreational activity. It’s no longer a safety issue.”
One option is to promote swimming as both a sport and skill, with cardiovascular, flexibility and endurance training benefits. That’s fine, say some, as long as you don’t try to replace other activities.
“I promote swimming as an accessory to football, basketball, cheerleading; it would be stupid to try to divorce the black community from the traditional sports in their community,” says Wright of the Aqua Angels.
Wright launched the Aqua Angels after fighting to keep the inner-city pools open throughout the summer. He believes that when it comes to teaching minorities, programming should be geared to the audience.
For instance, address stigmas but don’t dwell on them. Make swimming “cool” for younger children by using pop culture references as Woodard does at Pompey Park Pool. Older teens tend to appreciate personal stories and experiences.
And be sure not to let challenges stop the process. Kevin Pearson knows this firsthand. To address transportation concerns, the executive director of the East Communities YMCA in Austin, Texas, takes swim lessons into the city.
“We go to summer camps, day cares, even the housing projects and apartment complexes,” says Pearson, whose program reached nearly 1,000 at-risk kids last summer. “I like the idea of going to them because that’s where they’re going to be doing their swimming eventually.”
Yet taking swim lessons into a community is expensive. That’s why some experts say the most logical way to address the problem is to take swim lessons to where the kids already are: the schools.
“I would like to see swimming lessons be mandatory for kindergarten classes in the schools,” says Anna Plotkin, coordinator of Florida’s Palm Beach County Drowning Prevention Coalition. “I issue tons of certificates for discounted swim lessons, but a lot are not redeemed because kids get sick or they don’t have transportation; there are all these outside influences.
“If it’s in the school, the child is there. All other issues are moot. That’s how I think we’re going to solve the problem,” Plotkin adds.
Changing school curricula is daunting, however, so some coaches opt to partner with school systems to provide swim lessons for students. Pompey Park Pool did just that. Four years ago, program coordinator Woodard joined forces with an elementary school that had a high percentage of disadvantaged students. As a result, nearly 90 percent of the fourth and fifth graders in the school today know how to swim.
What’s more, Woodard has been able to keep the kids in the sport by hiring coaches of all backgrounds, so kids can identify with the staff and believe in their abilities. Experts say they see the best results when swim instructors reflect the population they serve.
For example, Pompey Park Pool’s six-member staff includes three blacks, one of whom is Haitian; two whites; and a Native American, named Nina.
“Nina is an Inuit, and she is a big positive role model for the girls who come in,” Woodard says. “The kids accept her, and she accepts them. With a lot of my kids, you have to become a friend first. Once they trust you, the sky is the limit in terms of how hard they’ll work for you.
“We’re kind of like a big family here. They come in and give the instructors hugs. You’re instilling something positive into the kids. It really connects you to them,” he says.
Still, developing that kind of diversity isn’t easy. Many swim instructors, even minority ones, don’t want to go to the “hard, tough neighborhoods” where education is needed, says Pitts, who created one of the industry’s only instructional swim videos by a minority teacher for minority kids.
“It’s hard to attract lifeguards and swim instructors to black communities,” Pitts explains. “You never find a shortage of coaches for the Little League football or basketball team. That kind of expertise is groomed in the community year after year,” Pitts adds. “But municipalities don’t build swimming pools in the black communities. It’s an atrocity.”
Staying the course
Today, more and more aquatics professionals agree, and they’re working to end that atrocity. At North Carolina Central University, Aquatics Director Thornton C. Draper and his colleague, Kaky McPeak, are writing a grant to up the industry’s number of minority role models. They hope to increase the sport’s exposure by tapping black college-level swimmers as mentors and swim instructors for black middle-schoolers.
“We have to make a concentrated effort to teach swimming to minority kids and then bring them into the lifeguard industry and all levels of aquatics and facility management,” Thornton says.
But that regional effort is not enough. Many experts say aquatics must follow the formula successfully adopted by the U.S. Tennis Association.
“When the Williams sisters started winning in tennis, that was because the sport had gone out of its way to open up courts and get kids involved who weren’t traditional players, who weren’t white,” says Beth Hall, the parent of two adopted minority children who both swim on California’s diverse Oakland Barracudas team. “I think that national organizations need to put money behind [diverse] teams that are going out of their way to do that.
“It’s not cheap for a working-class family to join these clubs. When people see that there’s a genuine effort to involve more people and give them a voice in what they need, I think often that opens doors and things begin to change,” she says.
Before that can happen in aquatics, however, Hall and others say a national group must step up.
But which group? And when?
The Red Cross and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America adhere to a plan of recruiting instructors at large, providing water safety education and supporting local initiatives, says Mike Espino, manager of aquatics technical development at the Red Cross. The U.S. Lifesaving Association and the American Swimming Coaches Association say they view themselves as ancillary to the aquatics industry. And the International Swimming Hall of Fame unveiled a new mission last year that gives the organization a face-lift so dramatic, it won’t have time to “be everything to everyone,” says Bruce Wigo, the group’s CEO.
What’s left in the eyes of many is the sport’s national body, USA Swimming, which is currently embroiled in this very issue as a newly established task force decides in what direction to take its outreach program.
“When we first started outreach, we just felt that it was such an ultrawhite sport that it would be good to include more minorities for greater inclusion, and to access a huge talent base that’s being missed right now,” says Donald Walker, director of the Alamo Area Aquatic Association, a USA Swimming club in San Antonio.
“Historically, most minorities involved in competitive swimming have been highly affluent people,” says Walker, founder of the Cinco de Mayo International Invitational Swim Meet, which promotes swimming to Hispanics. “Now we’re seeing that change. There’s greater awareness out there. The Olympic Games receive a lot of coverage. Our national championship is televised. That’s helpful in getting everyone involved.”
For the past 10 years, USA Swimming has offered $2,000 grants to programs aimed at improving diversity. In addition, the body dropped its $56 annual membership fee to $5 for underprivileged swimmers.
Despite this, the group realized its outreach program was too team-oriented and failing to target the right people. At a meeting in June, a task force developed several goals to help revitalize the program. At press time, the goals had not yet been presented to the body’s board of directors.
“I know that many of the coaches who have been doing this and helping in outreach might be frustrated because they want to help everybody,” says Sue Nelson, aquatics program specialist at USA Swimming and staff liaison to the task force overseeing outreach. “But they have made headway in terms of involving more minorities through swim meets. We just want to increase their abilities to do more. We want to let things happen and build into a continuum.”
That’s a mistake, say some. Such a mentality puts the burden back on individuals and grass-roots efforts.
“The people who run swimming are ‘old school,’” says a source familiar with USA Swimming Outreach, who asked to remain anonymous. “This is what I’ve heard behind closed doors. It’s struggling to break out of this country club, exclusive mentality and become an equal-opportunity sport. It needs to start at the top, not at the bottom.”
That means people of color need to be in leadership positions. Yet the USA Swimming board lacks a representative of color. “People at the meeting were frustrated,” the individual says. “They want someone of color put on the USA Swimming board. That’s when you know an organization is serious about its intentions.”
Still, many agree that USA Swimming’s leadership is only part of the solution. Truly addressing the issue, they say, will take a combination of national leadership and local cooperation, such as the Red Cross.
“I think it needs to come from the top down and also from grass roots,” says Alison Terry, a San Diego ocean lifeguard and biracial competitive swimmer, who also sits on the task force. “Hopefully, USA Swimming can narrow its focus and we can all get on the same page with this vision.
“The seeds are being planted,” she continues. “When those start being watered and have the opportunity to grow, we’ll see the fruits develop. It’s going to take time and a collective effort, but it will happen.”
