Come Two, Come All
Almost anybody can learn to swim at the College's Karl Michael Pool these days. If you're potty-trained, there's a course for you. Between them, the women's and the men's swimming teams have set up courses for folks from 2 to 92. The newest offerings are the women's Swim-A-Tot and Adult Aquatics programs, both given for the first time during the past year. These new courses bracket the older course for 5-to-18-year-olds begun in 197.4 by the men's team in order to finance its training trip to Florida during midwinter break.
When Coach Susan Lutkus decided that the fledgling women's team had developed to the point where a morale-boosting training trip was in order, she followed the men's lead and looked to community teaching as a fundraiser. Lutkus, who had done some toddler teaching as a teenager back home in Ohio, figured - rightly-that there was a need in this part of the frozen north for an indoor swimming program for small children. The response to the program she offered last spring for 2-to-4-year-olds was terrific: Lutkus and her team of 15 instructors had many more applicants than the 85 they could handle.
Under Lutkus' supervision, the women's team teaches toddlers to put their faces in the water, hold their breath, blow bubbles, bob, kick, float, jump in, and do an elementary arm stroke. The course offers parents the option of being instructed while they teach their children themselves or having their children instructed directly.
The team will teach adults basic swimming or anything beyond. Lutkus described the 40 or so participants in Adult Aquatics as ranging from a non-swimmer who said, "If you can teach me to get my face wet in seven lessons, it will be worth it," to a grandparent who could easily breast-stroke a mile but wanted to learn the Australian crawl. By the end of the course, the non-swimmer could tread water, backstroke, and swim freestyle, and the grandparent was happily crawling away. Asked if they had had any failures, Lutkus smiled firmly and said, "No. I'll do whatever it takes. I really don't like to admit that I can't teach somebody to swim."
