By USA Swimming Foundation  | Tuesday, March 26, 2019 

Funding for free or reduced-cost swim lessons to help children across the country

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – The USA Swimming Foundation announced today that it has awarded $507,461 to learn-to-swim programs across the country through its first-round of 2019 grant funding for Make a Splash Local Partners. The grants will go towards swim lesson programs, providing 25,705 children with the opportunity to learn how to swim.

The USA Swimming Foundation vetted more than 240 applications through a competitive annual review process and chose 85 programs to receive funding, 26 of whom are first time USA Swimming Foundation grant recipients. Since 2007, the USA Swimming Foundation has awarded more than $6.2 million dollars to help fund learn-to-swim programs across the country. 

“It’s an incredible feeling to know that USA Swimming Foundation funding will be used to create a valuable swimming experience for tens of thousands of children who may not have had the opportunity to learn how to swim,” USA Swimming Foundation Executive Director Debbie Hesse said. “We are thrilled with the depth of this year’s Make a Splash Local Partner applicant pool and we couldn’t be prouder to support these exciting and lifesaving opportunities for children across the country. We owe a tremendous thank you to our partners and donors, who continue to make a difference.”

In 2018, through its Make a Splash Local Partner network, the USA Swimming Foundation helped provide more than 1.3 million children with swimming lessons. Together, the Foundation and their network of 1,000 swim lesson providers across the country are helping to spread national awareness on the importance of learning to swim and bringing together strategic partners to end drowning. More than 7.5 million children have now been served since 2007.

The following USA Swimming Foundation Make a Splash Local Partners will receive funding through this first round of 2019 grant awards: 

The USA Swimming Foundation works to strengthen the sport of swimming by raising funds to support programs that save lives and build champions, in the pool and in life. To find, get, or give a swim lesson visit: www.usaswimmingfoundation.org

To learn more about the USA Swimming Foundation and the Make a Splash initiative, including grant opportunities, please visit www.usaswimmingfoundation.org/makeasplash, or follow us at http://www.facebook.com/SwimFoundation

Photo Courtesy: Andy RossFresh

Fresh off the heels of a $27 million renovation project to the Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Complex, the International Swimming Hall of Fame (ISHOF), signed a 30-year lease to remain in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.ISHOF erected its world-renowned museum and shrine to aquatic sports in Fort Lauderdale back in 1965. The lease with the city expired in 2015, putting the iconic entity in a state of limbo.  For the past three years, ISHOF had been on a month-to-month lease.  With the Aquatic Complex in disrepair, bleachers condemned and no long-term lease, ISHOF elected to move its operations to Santa Clara, CA..The decision to relocate to Santa Clara was based mostly on a belief that a new $250 million aquatic complex was going to be built in Santa Clara and ISHOF would be a primary occupant.  The Santa Clara project stalled in 2017.  In November of that year, Bruce Wigo stepped down as the CEO of ISHOF and the ISHOF Board of Directors hired Brent Rutemiller as its CEO.  Rutemiller convinced Wigo to remain on as ISHOF’s historian.  With a new team and board in place, ISHOF re-engaged with Lee Feldman, Fort Lauderdale City Manager to remain in Fort Lauderdale and find dollars to renovate the Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Complex.  READ MORE….

Source: Swimming Hall of Fame Remains in Fort Lauderdale, Signs 30-Year Lease – Swimming World News

Lars Humer is coming home.Humer, who started swimming and coaching at Moana Pool 40 years ago, is the new head coach for the Dunedin Swim Coaching Board.The former John McGlashan College pupil and national surf life-saving representative is currently coaching in high performance in Ireland and has coached at an Olympic Games.Humer (55) has been in the United Kingdom or Ireland for nearly two decades but the urge to come home was too strong to ignore.  Read More..

Source: Laing had significant impact on new Dunedin head coach | Otago Daily Times Online News

In her new photobook, Swimming Pool, Slovak photographer Maria Svarbova introduces herself in the first few lines: “I was born in 1988, only one year before the Velvet Revolution ended communism in Czechoslovakia. I didn’t experience the regime firsthand, but its visual remnants have always surrounded me.” She goes on to say that she often equates the communist era with fond childhood memories and a general nostalgia, both of which come through in her striking photographs of Slovak swimming pools.  Read More…

Source: The Elegant Minimalism of Soviet-Era Swimming Pools

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Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

Agon is the proud sponsor of all high school coverage (recruiting, results, state championships, etc.) on SwimmingWorld.com. For more information about Agon, visit their website AgonSwim.com.Florida High School Swimming and Diving will conclude for the 2017 season this weekend with the 3A and 4A Championship meets. 3A action will be on Friday, followed by 4A action on Saturday.Last year‘s action was highlighted by two state records from Plant junior Morgan Tankersley. The Buchholz girls and Riverview boys were repeat state champions.GirlsMorgan Tankersley broke two state records, the 200 and 500 freestyles, at last year’s meet. Tankersley, now a Stanford commit, returns to those two events this year. Buchholz junior Isabel Ivey won’t make Tankersley’s path an easy one. Ivey was the 200 IM and 50 free state champ at last year’s 1A meet when she was a sophomore at Oak Hall. With her transfer to Buchholz, the defending champions are looking even stronger this year.  Read More

Source: https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com

Southwest Aquatics, based in Winter Garden, FL, have hired Larry Jukes as their new Head Age Group Coach.  Read more by clicking the link below:

Source: Southwest Aquatics Hires Larry Jukes as New Head Age Group Coach – Swimming World News

2016 and 2000 Olympic gold medalist Anthony Ervin was named event ambassador for the 10th Airtel Delhi Half Marathon scheduled for November 19. This will be Ervin’s first trip to

Source: Anthony Ervin Named Ambassador For Delhi Half Marathon – Swimming World News

OK, imagine you’re a 14-year-old boy. You’ve just started your freshman year at a brand new high school. You’re self conscious and worried about fitting in. Then, your gym teacher tells you to strip naked and walk onto the pool deck with your nude male classmates. Yes, those same classmates you sit next to in math.It’s hard to imagine that any high school would require boys to swim naked today. But for more than 50 years (even until 1980, by some accounts), this was standard policy at public high schools in Chicago and across the country.   Curious City  listener Michael San Filippo grew up hearing stories about what it was like from his dad.“We just could not really believe that that was something they did,” he says.Michael and several other listeners have sent questions to Curious City asking for more information about the school policy. Specifically, Michael asked: Why did Chicago boys swim naked in high school? How did that start and why did it stop? And was it unique to Chicago?

Curious City asked Chicago Public Schools for data and information about the nude swimming policy multiple times, but officials did not respond to multiple requests.  So, we turned to documents, archivists, former CPS coaches, and former students to piece together what the practice was like, why schools required it, what effect it had on students, and how it finally ended.  The search for answers revealed a lot about the limits of early 20th-century pool-filtration technology and the way American society’s attitudes have changed on personal hygiene, privacy, sexuality, and gender. It also uncovered a mountain of anger, confusion, and anxiety among some former students who still wonder why school officials made them swim naked while their female counterparts got to wear suits in separate classes.

Why boys were required to swim nude    

So, was there a good reason to make teenage boys swim naked while their female counterparts got to wear suits?    To find an answer, it helps to know a few things about the history of public swimming pools and the evolving views on personal hygiene.  During the 1920s, YMCAs and schools were building pools across the country for fitness and to teach swimming. Drowning was a big problem at the time.The country was also obsessed with fighting disease and promoting personal hygiene, which in the 1920s, was also associated with “good morals.”  Health officials worried that allowing potentially dirty fabrics into public pools could introduce germs, and bacteria-killing pool chlorination had still not been perfected.   Plus, at the time, swimming pools had fairly primitive filters that could easily be clogged by fabric fibers from swimsuits, which were made of cotton and wool – yes wool.   So, in an effort to minimize bacteria, keep pool filters from clogging and ensure male swimmers were clean, the American Public Health Association (APHA) recommended the following in their 1926 standards handbook:   Read More….

Source: WBEZ