Olympic medalist Regan Smith learned to swim at a Foss Swim School in 2007. (Photo: Foss Swim School)
Writer: Michael Morain
Even the Olympic swimmers started with the basics. They learned to float and doggy-paddle years ago, long before they were rocketing through the pool this month in Paris.
Regan Smith, the Twin Cities swimmer who last week won five medals (two gold, three silver), learned how to swim as a 5-year-old at her neighborhood Foss Swim School. She’s one of more than 20 million students who have learned to swim over the past 30 years in the school’s pools across the Midwest.
“Every day, we see at least 100 kids,” said Ellie Meyers, an assistant manager at the Foss Swim School in Ankeny.
The Ankeny location opened in 2020 with the Foss’ typical U-shaped indoor pool, where younger swimmers can splash around the shallow arm of the U while older swimmers paddle longer distances in the other.
Enrollment has opened up for the fall quarter, Sept. 3 through Dec. 22, for students from 6 months on up.
Some of the students are adults who’ve always wanted to learn to swim or were prompted by a scary incident at a pool or lake. Drowning continues to be the single leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 4, and the second leading cause of unintentional injury-related death for children up to 14.
To help, Foss offers on-site instruction as well as free outreach programs — dry-land presentations about water safety — for preschools, day care sites and neighborhood groups. Those safety programs encourage people to use close supervision, wear life jackets when appropriate, install barriers and alarms around pools, and know how to respond to emergencies.
“We’re definitely moving in the right direction,” Meyers said.
Her goal is to teach basic swimming skills, but she still admires the swimmers who excel. She’s been watching the Olympics.
“It’s incredible,” she said. “Their breathing techniques — in the 50-meter, some of the men don’t breathe the whole time, which is wild.”
