Leaving a legacy: USA Swimming, Indiana Sports Corp. dedicate $400K to teaching kids to swim

Well before the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials open at Lucas Oil Stadium and well after they are over, the event will have a long-term impact on Indianapolis.

Thanks to an agreement between the Indiana Sports Corp. and USA Swimming, $400,000 will be spent on legacy programs that will provide water-safety instruction for thousands, teach hundreds to swim, build Indianapolis Public Schools’ swimming programs and grow the Indy Parks swim team.

“With every event we do that’s on this kind of scale, we always want to have an impact or a legacy piece of it,” said Melissa Thompson, vice president of bids and external affairs for the Indiana Sports Corp. “It was a natural fit that that legacy and that impact be in learn-to-swim programming.

“Swimming is the only sport that can actually save your life,” she said. “So we wanted to put a focus on how many kids—especially in underserved communities—we could teach to swim. USA Swimming agreed, so we put together what we thought we could do in terms of numbers, and that’s how we arrived at the $400,000.”

Joel Shinofield, managing director of sport development for Colorado-based USA Swimming, said one goal is “to make events last more than a week. Both groups [the Sports Corp. and USA Swimming] are working from the same perspective: Let’s find a way to make a lasting imprint.”

So far, more than $75,000 in grants have been distributed to organizations such as swim clubs and YMCAs around the state to pay for Swim IN Safety. The learn-to-swim and water-safety program was created to help ensure that if a child falls in the water, he or she knows how to get to safety. Thompson said more than 25,000 children already have gone through a water safety or a learn-to-swim program in the past year—and the goal is to get another 25,000 people through the training by the end of 2024.

The Riviera Club Foundation, which was founded in 2019 by Riviera Club members who wanted to see the exclusive club leverage its resources to give back to the community, has so far guided 186 students through the Swim IN Safety program in partnership with the Martin Luther King Community Center, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Indiana, Indianapolis Public Schools and other organizations.

Rachel Head, director of programs, said the foundation’s goal is to offer free programming to those who have the highest risk of drowning—or who have the least access to opportunities to learn how to swim. She said it has been eye-opening to watch kids go from clinging to swim instructors to confidently swimming the length of the club pool.

“There is too little access to opportunities to learn how to swim for those who can’t afford them,” said Danielle Wolfe, The Riviera Club Foundation’s executive director. “And we know there is pretty significant risk for those individuals who don’t have those basic water-safety skills to get into a difficult situation. We believe there is an opportunity to put an end to preventable drownings, and we’re going to do everything we can to see that goal come to fruition.”

The Riviera Club Foundation is also working on the second part of the legacy programming—training IPS middle-school students to swim. The Riviera Club and Indiana University Natatorium have been hosting lessons for Northwest and Harshman middle schoolers since the beginning of the school year with the idea of helping IPS build its high school swim teams.

Darren Thomas, IPS’ district director of athletics, said that next school year, when IPS has seven middle schools, all will offer learn-to-swim programs. The year after that, each middle school is slated to have its own swim team. The goal is to have larger, more substantial and competitive high school swim teams.

In addition to supporting the swim programs, some funds from the legacy project will go toward improving IPS’s swimming facilities—things like new starting blocks and a revamped timing system at Arsenal Technical High School and improved lane lines at several high school pools.

“People don’t usually think of inner-city school districts, public school districts, as having swim programs,” Thomas said. “And if they do, they’re usually pretty subpar. We don’t want that. We want to make sure we’re putting our best foot forward for our students.”

The third part of the legacy and impact agenda is to help Indy Parks grow its swim teams. Shinofield said USA Swimming has an initiative to build community swim teams within parks and rec departments across the country.

A couple of days before the Olympic trials start, USA Swimming will hold a community parks and recreation national championship at the Indiana University Natatorium near downtown. Teams from Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and Indianapolis will participate.

Shinofield said there was a time when Indianapolis and cities such as Minneapolis and Detroit had strong swimming programs. But that changed, largely due to demographic shifts in the 1980s and ’90s, along with budget cuts.

The hope is that the legacy projects surrounding the 2024 Olympic trials will not only begin to rebuild swimming programs but provide ancillary benefits like training future lifeguards to work at city pools.

“We’re getting a lot done for a small amount of money,” said the Sports Corp.’s Thompson.

“The things we’ve been able to see and the kids we’ve been able to impact has just been amazing,” she said. “It’s giving people the opportunity to learn a skill that can save their life, but it’s also a lot of fun, too.”

“Swimming itself is more than competition,” added IPS’ Thomas. “It’s really a life skill.

“It’s something our kids, our families, should know how to do,” she said. “You don’t need to compete in high school to know how to swim.

“We see schools like Carmel, which constantly wins state championships, and then we see our schools, where people don’t even know how to swim. We have to do what we can to raise the level at IPS Schools. So we’re happy to have these partners come through with their generosity.”•

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