Drive past the "Pop" Mounger Pool in Magnolia these days and you'll usually find it filled with either energetic swimmers playing in the water or swimmers who are seriously exercising and accumulating laps as they swim from end to end. They each get their designated times for pool use.
Among the most important times, however, are those hours that are devoted to swimming lessons. Not only is swimming an enjoyable form of exercise, it's also a valued, life-saving skill. The knowledge of how to swim is a basic skill that everyone should possess in order to possibly save his or her own life someday.
Swimming is like driving, in that you should get instruction from some-one trained to teach the subject. When you learn from a friend or relative, they're liable to pass along their bad habits. My father, for instance, can't do the crawl stroke with his face submerged in the water - but then, he learned to swim in the Ohio River.
With the amount of water surround-ing us here in the Northwest, knowing how to swim during an emergency is a skill no one should lack.
My mother, wise woman that she was, saw to it that I started swimming lessons when I was 8. (This was way back in 1955, before little tots were considered old enough to take swim lessons.) We were living in a suburb of Chicago, and she signed me up for weekly lessons with the YMCA.
The local Y didn't have a pool, so they bused us over to another suburb that did. Here was a passel of us ele-mentary-school boys with a "camp counselor type" in charge. I remember he had us singing camp songs on the bus ride; the grosser the song, the more popular it was.
That was also the year Disney's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" reached the neighborhoods. I was totally captivated by that movie, and I knew that in order to go underwater you had to know how to swim. Swim lessons got a lot more attractive.
When you start swimming instruction, they first get you comfortable with just being in the water. Then they teach you to put your face in the water and blow bubbles. Next they teach you that your body will float if you relax and don't thrash about. The various kicks then are taught with the assistance of a foam kickboard. Specific swim strokes are taught last.
We moved to California the year following those first swim lessons, and there was a private swim school only a few blocks from our house. At Swimland, I progressed from the Pollywog classes on up through the Shark classes. Soon I knew how to do the crawl stroke, elementary back-stroke, backstroke, sidestroke, breast-stroke and butterfly. Then they asked me to join the Swimland swim team.
After a while on the Swimland team, I started high school. I was never any good at football, basketball, base-ball or track, but I could swim. The summer between eighth grade and starting high school, I took a special water-polo instruction class. My high-school sport was a simple decision: I'd go out for water polo and swimming.
It was along about this time that I discovered surfing, too. This was before the invention of the surf-leash, so when you wiped out and lost your board, you usually had a long swim in somewhat rough water ahead of you.
Water polo and swim practice were two hours each day of going to the pool and putting in laps. It takes 72 laps of a 25-yard pool (the same size as the Mounger pool) to equal a mile. Sometimes you did laps with a kickboard, working on your chosen stroke's kicks; other times you fastened the kickboard to your feet with a big rubber band and pulled out laps using just your arms.
I talked recently to Sara Janecke, a staff member at Mounger, and she told me that some swim lesson slots are still open. For information, pick up a brochure at the pool or visit www. seattle.gov/parks/aquatics/mounger or give them a call at 684-4708.
Group swim lesson classes are available for tots (ages 6 months to 4 years); 3-year-olds; Kinder (4-5); youth and advanced youth (6-14); and adults and seniors. All classes are 30 minutes, with costs varying from $20 to $60 depending on the number of lessons taken. Children must be at least 6 months for tot lessons, and one parent per child needs to be in the wa-ter. Those who are not toilet-trained must wear swimming diapers or a cloth diaper with a plastic cover that has tight-fitting legs. No disposable diapers or loose-fitting swimsuits.
Lessons both for tots and 3-year-olds are held in the comfortable warm water (ranging from 92 to 94 degrees) pool with a 2-foot, 4-inch to 3-foot, 4-inch depth. Kinder, youth and adult lessons are conducted in the big pool. It's kept between 84 and 86 degrees and is 3 1/2 to 6 1/2 feet deep and 25 yards long.
The "Pop" Mounger Pool also offers personal swim instruction for those interested in special attention. Personal lessons allow quality instruc-tion that can be adjusted to fit individ-ual needs. These 30-minute classes range from one swimmer and one instructor for $22, to three swimmers with one instructor for $42.
Swimming is an essential life-saving skill everyone - not just athletes - should know. You never know when you could suddenly find yourself sub-merged in a body of water. Then those lessons you took as a kid will be all that could save you, or someone else.
[[In-content Ad]]
