YMCA teaches county second graders basic swimming, water safety

Jeff Snyder talks to the Nevada Rotary about its first program to teach all Vernon County second graders basic swimming and water safety skills. Ralph Pokorny/Daily Mail

Nevada Daily Mail

Around 256 Vernon County second grade children are less likely to drown today than they were before the Osage Prairie YMCA taught basic swimming and water skills to most of the county's second graders in its inaugural "Make a Splash" program last spring.

Jeff Snyder, YMCA CEO, recently told the Nevada Rotary Club, that working with the Vernon County schools, the Y was able to offer this to all county second graders at no cost to the students or the schools. He said the program was paid for by donations from area businesses and individuals, as well as other fundraising efforts.

"We're pretty confident we got 98 percent of the second graders in Vernon County," he said.

Snyder, who has been involved with similar programs at other YMCA's, said this was one of the goals from a strategic planning session the Y did when it first started.

"The vision was to teach every child to swim," he said.

He said they took the students in groups of 20, which was about the number of second graders each of the county schools had. This allowed each group from these schools to have four one-hour sessions in the pool.

For the Nevada school district, with more students, they were able to have three 45-minute sessions.

Snyder said they taught each child four basic skills they felt were important to keep them safe around water and to save their life should they fall in. The Y staff did all of the instruction and there were 18 to 20 volunteers who helped.

He said the they wanted the students to be able to swim 25 yards, float on their back for one minute, tread water for one minute and dive to a depth of 5 feet and return.

Snyder said when they tested the students before the lessons, nine students from the county schools could swim the 25-yard length of the pool and after the four sessions 20 additional children could swim the 25 yards.

For the Nevada students he said that 37 percent of them passed the swim test before the lessons and after the sessions, an additional 5.2 percent could swim the 25 yards.

"This shows there is a need for this," he said.

Snyder said he attributes this difference to the shorter time the Nevada students were able to spend in the pool.

Next year he said they hope to increase the instruction time for the Nevada students.

When it came to the back float he said about 43 percent of the students improved their skills about 30 percent of the students improved on treading water district wide.

In addition to teaching basic swimming skills, Snyder said they talked to the students about water safety and how to identify dangerous situations involving moving water, ice covered ponds, oceans and lakes. They also talked about life jackets and boating safety.