It seems Rowdy Gaines was destined to become the Voice of Swimming.

Left to his own devices, things probably would have veered another direction. As a high schooler, he tried out for four other sports before he took a shot at competitive swimming at 17.

“I had a friend who wanted to try out, so I kind of went with him and didn’t get cut,” Gaines recalls.

Apparently, the fifth time was the charm.

He not only made the high-school swimming team but gained a swimming scholarship to Auburn University. He went on to win three Olympic gold medals and has worked as a swimming commentator since shortly after his competitive career ended.

“It turned out pretty good,” he says with an audible smirk.

So the fact that he went on to be called the “voice of swimming” seems in the cards.

“I literally learned to swim before I learned to walk,” says Gaines, who wears one of his many hats for the Pool & Hot Tub Alliance, as its vice president of partnerships and development. “I grew up in Winter Haven, Fla. We lived on a lake, my parents water skied and took a boat to work every day.”

He not only turned his family pastime into a career for the history books, but he’s also leveraged his considerable profile, knowledge and energy into delivering free swim lessons to hundreds of thousands of children who otherwise may not have been able to receive them.

Long-term mission

Gaines is not new to the concept of striving to make every child a swimmer.

About 20 years ago, he worked for USA Swimming, hired to start up a foundation for the governing body of American competitive swimming. At first, the foundation was meant to raise money for Team USA.

After learning the rate of childhood drowning in the country, he made a major adjustment. “I changed the direction of the foundation to concentrate more on the learn-to-swim part of things.”

He went on to run similar programs in the private sector, as well as for YMCA of Central Florida, where he served as vice president of aquatics. Then in 2021, he joined the Pool & Hot Tub Alliance as vice president of partnerships and development, with the charge of running its Step Into Swim program.

“The mission for me has never really changed,” he says.

In his four years with PHTA, the organization has provided swim lessons to approximately 100,000 children. Added to his previous work, he estimates that nearly half a million children have received lessons under his watch.

Breaking taboos

In Gaines’ four yeas leading Step Into Swim, the operation has increased its funding every year.

In 2021, the program distributed approximately $300,000. The annual figure bumped to $560,000 in 2022, then $750,000 in 2023. Last year, Step Into Swim raised and donated approximately $1.26 million, making it possible to instruct approximately 32,000 children across 43 states.

Gaines believes his biggest key to success has been charging past the taboo that surrounded talk of drowning among pool and spa professionals.

“The biggest change I made was the fact that I had no fear to go to the industry,” he says. “When I first started, I’d knocked on a lot of doors. When you mentioned the word drowning, [I’d hear,] ‘People in our industry don’t like to talk about the word drowning. It’s not good for business.’ It took me a while to educate these amazing companies [that], instead of making this a negative, let’s turn this into a positive by creating more swimmers.”

In the near future, PHTA hopes to deepen Step Into Swim’s international representation. It currently has a presence in China and American Samoa and aims to include Canada, among others.

“Drowning is a global epidemic,” Gaines says.

The organization also plans to provide more grants directed at lessons for differently abled people, particularly children with autism, who are 160 times more likely to drown, according to the National Autism Association.

“We still have a long way to go,” Gaines says. “Drowning is still the No. 1 cause of death in children ages 1 to 4. Until that number drops significantly, we still have a ways to go.”