Lead Effectively and Live Humanely

by John Kasey

This is always a fun time of the year for the team. The swim season is over and some of us have been out of the pool just long enough to have forgotten the muscle aches of last season and start to look forward to getting wet again.

For over the past 20 years the Wabash Swim Team has been giving swim lessons every fall before the season and every spring after it is over. It is an event we look forward to each year as a chance to pass on some of our love for the sport of swimming. I am sure I speak for the team when I say it is one of the most rewarding experiences to move from the role of student to teacher and actually impart some knowledge of this wonderful activity to someone younger or less experienced.

Click here for a photo album of the guys and the kids from Thursday's lessons.

We enjoy getting together as a team and donating our time and our knowledge of swimming to help kids have fun in and around water. Teaching swim lessons gives us a chance to come back together as a team and learn from each other. Before, between, and after sessions of swim lessons, guys are sharing and benefiting from helpful hints given to each other about every aspect of swimming from how to teach breaststroke kick to simply helping a student put his face in the water. Swim lessons provide us with a great reality check, reminding us it takes time for kids to love the water like we do now.

The real benefit to teaching swim lessons comes in meeting the kids and their parents. It is fun to take time out of a college schedule and play like a kid again, and the parents have become legendary for remembering the fastest way to a Wabash man’s heart is through his stomach. We are almost always pleasantly surprised with gracious gifts of cookies and other baked goods which remind us just a little of how Mom used to make them. For these unwarranted confections we are eternally grateful. However, rest assured, we do not work only in the hopes of good treats but because we truly enjoy teaching kids about what we love.