Sebastopol Rotary swim program hits major milestone

Jeff Boal has long known how ingrained the Sebastopol Rotary Club’s Learn to Swim program is in the community, but it took a poolside encounter to truly drive the point home.

Boal, 80, is a regular swimmer. As such, he bumped into a woman a couple of years ago at Ives Pool and they started chatting about where and how she learned to swim as a kid.

Turns out she was in the first class of elementary school students who graduated from the local Rotary program that Boal spearheaded some 40 years ago.

It also turns out that the woman’s children were in the program or had gone through it.

Further still, the woman had paid the program back by becoming a volunteer and teaching other youngsters to swim.

It was about as full circle as one could get, Boal said.

“This thing not only has legs, but it’s a part of the fabric of town,” he said.

Launched in 1984, under Boal’s direction within the Rotary club, Learn to Swim has grown from 100 or so second graders going through the free, four week course to more than 300 each spring.

By the end of this spring session, organizers estimate some 13,000 local kids will have graduated.

“It’s an expectation now. It’s like the sun rises and the moon sets and Rotary Learn to Swim is in the spring,” Boal said. “That doesn’t make it easy. It takes hard work and that is where Rick and Greg have done just marvelous work.”

Rick and Greg are Rick Wilson and Greg Jacobs, Sebastopol Rotarians who for the past decade have grown the program to serving more than 300 kids each year.

Sponsored by Rotary and supported by an anonymous donor, the session that starts Monday will mark the 38th installment because of the two years lost to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s a whole heck of a lot of fun to be involved with,” Wilson said.

But Wilson and others say it’s about more than fun.

Drowning is the leading cause of death among children ages 1 to 4 in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Just this month, emergency responders found a body in their search for a 15-year-old boy who went missing in the Russian River.

Water safety should not be treated as a privilege but a life skill, backers said.

“It’s so important, especially when you consider all of the water around here, and the fact that another child was lost in the Russian River,” Wilson said.

The springtime program brings kids from participating schools including Gravenstein Elementary School, Forestville School, Oak Grove Elementary and Park Side School among others.

Schools arrange for students to be transported to and from Ives Pool for 30 minute sessions twice a week. Each student gets eight half-hour lessons.

“A young person who learns to swim is standing taller and his or her chest sticks out farther,” Wilson said. “It gives them confidence not only around water, but in every day life.”

Students are grouped according to level and, ideally, matched with one instructor for every four students.

And that is where the annual call for volunteers comes in.

The Sebastopol Rotary Club could use more help on this front. The club has about 85 volunteers signed up to help, but they’d like to get that number up to 110 to push the teacher to student ratio a little lower.

Sessions are held midmorning on Mondays and Wednesday and Tuesdays and Thursdays and run from April 22 to May 16. Organizers can accommodate scheduling needs.

Ann Hill has been signing up to help for the last quarter century.

A lifelong swimmer, she first volunteered 25 years ago when her husband was active in Rotary. She’s never left.

“It’s just such a wonderful program,” she said. “The kids are amazing.”

Second grade is the sweet spot to learn water safety, organizers said.

“At that point you can somehow get them to sit still and listen,” Boal said.

Even the kids who are initially uneasy around water are typically eager to learn, organizers said.

Often they are inspired by their peers, they said.

“They will see their friends from school doing it and think, ‘Well, maybe I can do it,’” Hill said. “They really want to learn to swim. We go from the very beginners, putting their face in the water to blowing bubbles, to kids who are swimming laps and learning strokes.”

Organizers insist that volunteers need not be elite swimmers, but simply capable and enthusiastic.

There is a full hour of training prior to the first lesson and there are coaches and other adults on the pool deck to help throughout the lessons.

“First of all, we are not trying to teach these kids to be Olympic swimmers. We are trying to teach them to be safe in the water,” Wilson said.

Veterans of the program say enthusiasm for kids and the water are the key ingredients.

“If you enjoy the water and enjoy kids, it’s an absolutely wonderful experience,” Hill said.

In perhaps the greatest endorsement for any volunteer gig, Hill said she wouldn’t miss the four weeks of teaching kids each spring for the world.

“I look forward to it every year and it’s sad when it ends,” she said.

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Instagram @kerry.benefield.