South Bay residents will have a chance to learn how to swim or improve upon their skills with EC’s summer swim program starting June 14 at the campus pool.
The program is run through the athletic department as a fundraising program which will help provide an estimated $29,000 for the campus and also for the aquatic sports programs at EC, Corey Stanbury said.
“The swim program helps make capital improvements in the swimming pool facility possible,” Stanbury said. “It supports scholarships offered through the EC Foundation and provides jobs for students.”
All of the instructors in the program are current or former students of EC who will teach different difficulty levels of swimming advancement.
“Teaching kids to swim is always a good deed,” Vince Fiamengo, kinesiology major and member of the swim and water polo team, said. ” It does help bring money for the water polo and swim teams, too.”
The minimum age requirement is five-years-old, and children may take beginner level classes.
“Most summers we teach about 500 to 600 children to swim so that they can be confident in the water and not be at risk of drowning,” Stanbury said.
“There are thousands of families in our community that have a positive image of EC because of this program,”he said.
The first session is offered June 14-17 from 3 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., and the second session is June 21-July 1 from 2 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
The first session consists of four, 30-minute group lessons and the second session consists of eight 30 minute group lessons.
With the price being as low as $40 per session for one person and $80 for two, the turnout expected should be high.
“We sent out 1,500 letters and pamphlets about the swim program to people in the area, or people who had signed up before,” Fiamengo said. “We’re hoping for a big turn out.”
Registration has already begun and people who are interested in taking a class are encouraged to register early since last year the program sold out and there is limited class space.