Saving Swimming Pools: The Battle for Community Resources and Health Benefits
The Role of Sports in Social Services and Community Development
The pressing issues facing the world of sports and swimming today needs YOU at the TABLE. From the closure of swimming pools to the role of sports in education, we must lead and seek power for more those beyond the championship meets.
- The potential closure of over 30 swimming pools in Toronto and its implications.
- The launch of enhanced games and the controversy surrounding supplement use.
- The importance of sports being included in discussions on health and education.
- The impact of budget cuts on drowning prevention efforts and opportunities for intervention.
- The role of community engagement and innovative solutions in promoting sports and safety.
We made a call out for Sue and Mick Nelson to join in future discussions. An interview is expected. But sadly, there were a few mistakes.
Corrections:
Mick and Sue Nelson worked at USA Swimming, not for the Foundation.
Their company, Total Aquatic Programming, (see https://totalaquatic.llc/) is still an independent contractors for USA Swimming.
Since 2008, they have been collecting data on fatal drownings.
Their goal is to help individuals, cities, foundations, and others identify their risks and understand where drownings are occurring. This information enables them to develop strategies and campaigns to raise awareness and inform their communities.
They also have kept records on pool closings.
Sequence of topics covered in the transcript, with sub-topic bullets below each primary topic:
- Challenges in Sports and Swimming
- Closing of swimming pools in Toronto
- Launch of enhanced games and concerns about supplement use
- Efforts to get a big picture view of the situation
- Child Protection and Social Services in the UK
- Comparison of information quality between the UK and Canada
- Role of Sport for Life in Canada
- Importance of sport in reintegrating kids into school
- Sport's Role in Health and Education
- Lack of representation of sport at decision-making tables
- Conversation with a developer about community needs and tax concerns
- Importance of selling the benefits of sports to health and education sectors
- Efforts to Save Swimming Pools in Ontario
- Battles to save school swimming pools
- Changing public perception about the value of swimming pools
- The role of swimming pools in community service and safety
- Integration of Sport in Social Services
- Challenges in aligning sport with social services, police, and hospitals
- Importance of understanding and meeting the needs of different stakeholders
- Starting small and expanding successful programs
- Selling Sport as a Community Builder
- The concept of "our gang" in sports
- Using sport to change lives and build community
- Creative ways to engage volunteers and participants
- Impact of Policy Changes on Drowning Prevention
- Effects of budget cuts on drowning prevention efforts
- Opportunities for sports organizations to fill the gap
- Importance of maintaining and expanding drowning prevention initiatives
- Data Collection and Analysis on Drowning Incidents
- Mick Nelson's work on tracking drowning statistics
- The need for comprehensive data to inform prevention strategies
- Potential collaboration with Mick Nelson for insights and business opportunities
- Future of Swimming and Sports Post-COVID
- Challenges in swimming education and access post-COVID
- The impact of COVID on sports participation and development
- Exploring alternatives and new sports trends
- Engagement and Community Building through Media
- Promotion of the "Heavy or Not" TV show and podcast
- Invitation for audience participation with school or team mascots
- Use of mascots in promoting mental skills for young athletes
Each topic and sub-topic provides a detailed look into the various discussions and concerns raised in Heavy Or Not, jump-cut #34.
Keywords:
Sports, swimming, Toronto pool closures, enhanced games, child protection, social services, Sport for Life, health and education, community service, drowning prevention, insurance companies, CDC budget cuts, after-school programs, social background, poverty, swimming lessons, drowning statistics, aquatic programming, coaching, youth sports, mental skills, mascots, sports psychology, Heavy or Not podcast.
Transcript
There are some big things happening in sports and swimming and some of it isn't good, it's rather heavy. In Toronto, they're talking about closing more than 30 swimming pools. There's enhanced games being launched, which gets our mind blown with regards to supplement and use-induced athletes. Barry and I are working on it and we're talking about it and we're trying to get a big picture view of things so stay tuned to Heavy or Not episode 34.
A lot of stuff happening in the in the UK in some areas. One I think I sent you that child protection stuff that that group that looks after all the background of things like social services and youth clubs and all those people that work with hard to reach kids. What I find about that group is that the information is better than what we get over here. Probably the only group that's in Canada anyway.
Let's look at it that way. The only group in Canada that I think is close is Sport for Life. They're going that way, looking at the bigger picture. And it reminded me the other day in that when I was in the UK, they said, and we started bringing those kids in that we had to get back into school by sport.
What came up multiple times, and it was and I came up with the idea is that sport is never at the table. That took a lot of people by surprise, but really we're not at the table, both in the States and here and probably in Europe too. And people ask, what do you mean by not being at the table? It's sort of like, if you've got people like you and I pushing and selling, and I met with probably a potential sponsor the other day, The conversation went like this, you know, like about us building a new pool.
And he's a developer, he developed everything that I live in and all along the lake. And he said, Barry, what you have to realize in this small community is that there's me and you wanting those things. I need them because I like swimming and I'm more active than my peers, right? Like he's in his seventies.
And they're costing the hospital a fortune by every time they go. They don't run, they shuffle. They don't wolf, they shuffle. And he says, and the only difference between me and them, it's not finances or anything else, it's just what I do and what I did as a kid and what I've carried on doing.
He said, but then the other side of that is that those people only think of one thing also is they don't want any tax increases. You can't have it both ways. So what we have to do is how do we sell that this is, what we're saving if we do this this and this and that and I I see this the UK is is pushing more at that than than anywhere else than anywhere else right and and I know guys that I've met with like John Leonard was was that way before is that we need to get the insurance companies on and I know it does happen in some of the bigger companies in the States if you work out your insurance costs less what I meant
by When not at the table, sport doesn't think it has a place at those tables in health, education, and everything else. It's just a few hours between every now and then and go, no, it's not just about the kid winning a medal or becoming the fastest runner or the highest jumper in the world. It's not about that. I think that the great coaches and the coaches that have been in it long term, on You need to stay healthy to get through your exams and everything else.
You need to stay focused and not be distracted from all the other things that are out there. But sport is never at the table selling that. Nobody, right? The guy goes, all I need to do is sell and get a sponsor to pay for these top kids, right?
Without saying, hey, I need to be at the education meetings. like what's going on in Ontario. It is amazing. You know, there's huge battles now trying to save 33 or 40 pools that are in the schools.
And finally, finally, somebody and the articles in the paper are changing day by day. Finally, in those articles, it's gone from what we don't need a swimming pool to do you guys realize what a swimming pool does? It's in its final few weeks of let's ask 54 million out of those 60 pools. And they go, the pool was never built to make money.
The pool was made to service a community. Get babies to learn how to swim so that all the lakes and rivers around where they live, there's less chance of drowning. But who is the messenger? That's the issue.
Who has that responsibility? If you look at your system and our system, we're pretty close, like we have provincial systems, you have LSCs. Could you come up with an LSC where somebody off that board sits and meets with education and health and everything else?
No, it's out of our field of comfort, and it really needs to be championed. And you sent an article And it made it in the last podcast about how the CDC, the Center for Disease Control, got cut by President Trump. And so the people that were looking after all the data with regards to the drowning epidemic is now they're out of work. Yeah, it's going to need to be something that we carry in the discussions?
And even if in my after school discussions, we've run into this too, well, it's sports isn't part of our worry. It's after school things, but it's about literacy or STEM or getting their homework done. And the coaches are just in the way because then it takes the kids out of their other after school things.
And that's the sell point. That's what I did when I first started. They gave me this blank sheet of paper and some money in the UK and said, we want you to get kids back in. What can you do?
And I go, well, tell me what the problems are. So they told me all the problems. Most of us know it. You know, it's social background.
It's lack of access. It's poverty. It's everything else. And those things are not going to go away.
They'll always be there. And you have to get to the point and going, what can sport do on every one of them? And it took me nearly a year. And it took me a year of learning also about what social services wanted, what the police wanted, what the hospitals wanted, even down to the fine little thing.
It has to be on this day. And I never thought about that. It has to be on this day, the police especially. Barry, it has to be Fridays.
and English It's not our problem. Our problem is this, we don't want to be here. We're not going to stay past by four o'clock. We're gone.
And then you have to take all that information from that group, look at what they want, and then go, OK, what can we change? And sometimes we had to rent or hire. extra uh caretakers you need to spend another two hours on on friday night i know you want to go off right but we'll pay because the police want us to pay and then you actually have to start off very very small because you can't do it in multiple places you have to do it in one place and go let's try it at that gym with that school and this and see how it goes and then we have to try and find coaches, but there are coaches, especially those that don't have full-time jobs in sport.
This can get you up the ladder. If you could teach basketball on Friday night, it doesn't have to be swimming. Swimming's an easy one because the easy part about swimming is we can bring your costs down a little bit by renting your pool. But those are the arguments.
But I know a lot of my peers wouldn't do it and going, You can sell sport better than everybody. You can sell from an experience. Hey, I've had some great athletes, but that's not why I do it. I do it because I change lives.
I do it because I'm helping the kid grow up. I do it like, I love your word the other week. You can be in our gang. Our gang does this.
I love that, right? And I've been selling that word gang to volunteers that I've been doing. I got a friend down in the States who is using the word gang. This is our gang.
It's different. Yes, it's got t-shirts. It's not got tattoos, but we have like false tattoos that we can stick on them. I want a tattoo to be in your gang.
I'm going, okay, yeah, you got one. It's how we sell it, but it's how important it is.
We use the Sharpies on the skin for the triathletes, you know, the special rub on numbers. Yeah. And then with the
little guys, we write the numbers on to know what they're
laying
in heat they're in. Right. And which they still look at when they get on the block, am I in the right one? Right.
Right. But this is what I'm thinking. And I don't know if you want to post this out there at the moment. This is what I'm thinking.
With our friend down, your king down there, cutting all those things off, it's going to leave huge opportunities. Unfortunately, you and I know what's going to happen. Drowning will go up. Lack of interest will go up.
pools will have another excuse to shoot. Well, the government doesn't even care about it. Why should I care about it, right? They'll drop it.
But there's an opportunity, and you need to talk to Doug, there's an opportunity there. Where do we fit in now? It's another door. It's another door of opportunity.
I'm going, hey, guess what, guys? We're sorry you've been cut. We know you've done all the work on this and that. We're here to try and help you replace some of those things.
How can we help? And in some cases, you might want to take it over. Because I tell you what, when your next change comes, whether it's two years or four years, they'll say, we need to get all that back. And then we need to be in a position.
No, we've been doing this for the last two years. We want to say. We want to say, and we want the grants to carry on what we've done. They're just cutting anything that they can think they can save money on without the outcome.
There is a fellow, I don't know if you know them, Mick Nelson. He used to work at the US Swimming Foundation and now he has this total aquatic programming thing where they do the build a pool. But he keeps track of drowning stats. So whenever I see a thing in the news and I often send it to him.
But he must have hundreds of Google alerts and has a giant spreadsheet. So if it says drowning on it, then it pings him and then he'll go follow it. And then he'll start to tabulate the age of the victim. did it happen and what type of body of water and then he tries to do it and every month he makes a he generates a report by state and he tries to look at it but I'm sure he doesn't have some of that insider knowledge that the government
would have as far as like emergency room records and things of that nature But he I want to have an interview with him so that he can explain what he's been doing. And and I know that some of his business things are he was trying to sell them off or, you know, they're just getting older and they want to see it sustainable. All
right. Let me just dig in there. Let's try to have a session with him. What what what I'm worried about.
Right. There's going to be a vacuum in the market. We're already in the hole of not enough swimming teachers, not enough access, not enough and I'm Hey, have started using the phone when they come to the beach and looking at the kids. That's data because that's stuff that you go, well, it's not fake.
Those are issues we have to deal with. We can't say COVID never happened and it didn't have any impact on swimming. You go, yes, it did for four years. Some kids never got swimming lessons.
And at the same time, the price of private lessons went from year to year. So it's about all those things. So I think that guys, hey, well, he might be interesting to talk to saying, hey, you know, what do you want to do with your business? Because this is a crucial time.
I have too many friends that I'm, you know, they love what I do on coaching. But to me, it's easy. To me, it's easy that part of trying to get faster kids. and open doors for them and get support for them.
But the other side, that's, if we don't have these kids swimming, their sports are really gonna hurt. I mean, really hurt. We're gonna be sitting in LA, how come we got no 14 year olds coming through? Well, somebody said there was this like bad cold that went around.
No, no, that was just fake news.
And I'm also interested in some of the alternatives. We'll get to LA and we'll find that all the girls are playing flag football. Yes.
Totally right. And soccer.
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We're gathering a fun collection for the next edition of Mental Skills for Young Athletes. In the book and course, animal mascots come to life. Sharing mental skills and preparing for a big sports festival, they help bring sports psychology to life for kids of all ages. We would love to include you and your mascot photos.
Check the show notes for the link. Youcanswim.wetransfer.com. That's the letter U for the United States, and then C-A-N, as in Canada. One of our favorite mascots is the parrot.
The parrot mascot helped kick off Pittsburgh's Take a Father to School Day. Thanks in advance for sending us your mascot photos.