Swimmers complete lessons

Another fantastic year of swimming lessons is in the books. There were some challenges with rescheduling due to remodels and an intimidatingly cool pool after it was refilled; however, our youth persisted and learned some critical new skills.

We had an awesome group of 24 swimming students this year. We had two Quackers who learned skills like blowing bubbles, front and back floats and front crawls.

Our eight Level 1 swimmers learned rhythmic bobs, retrieving objects underwater, floating, gliding and flutter kicks. Five Level 2 swimmers mastered pancake floats, rotary breathing, whip kicks and treading water.

For Level 3, four swimmers worked on whip kicks front and back, breaststroke, elementary backstroke, side stroke, butterfly and knee dives. Level 4 was a smaller group with one swimmer who learned to swim underwater, tread water with more than one kick and for at least three minutes, perform surface and standing dives, retrieve items from deeper water and extend her swimming distances to 30 feet.

For Level 5, we had two swimmers who mastered the tuck and pike dives and treading water without hands and extended their distances to 100 meters for front crawl, back crawl, breaststroke, elementary backstroke and side strokes, among other skills.

These kids worked hard and had fun for two weeks, despite the cold pool waters. These donors saved families a significant amount of money by funding bus and travel-related expenses: Powder River Energy, Powder River Energy Foundation, Town of Hulett/Hulett Rec Board, Summit National Bank and Range Communications.

The Belle Fourche Rec Center swim instructors are so good with kids and helping them learn skills for their level. We had some amazing chaperones who rode along too. It was a great session overall!

We hope to schedule lessons in the middle of June next year.