Thank you Nicole and Wes!
Your efforts are making a big difference in aquatic safety, public interest, and wellbeing. And you are providing others the opportunity to help accelerate the progress. In the USA, the UK, and other countries, swimming participation is down by 5-8% in the last 5 years yet downing is up 25-30%. People are swimming less as families and aquatics is more and more viewed as individual training rather than group play.
We must be careful in our industry to promote “Lifesaving and Lifegiving” rather than “Drowning Prevention”. Let’s accentuate the positive and it will reduce the negative. Our industry is still hyper-focused on individualism, separatism, and head-down activities. That is why drowning often occurs with a pool full of people all doing their own thing.
When we promote head-high social aquatic activity, play, and strategy, and educate that each person in the water is responsible for everyone else, we have a cohesive force in the water working together as one. It not only emulates lifesaving team action, it generates a “spectacle” that is hard to ignore and generates “spectatorship” which is the driving engine of prosperity and sport industry growth. This is proven in land-based sports and is more vital than ever for aquatics. #playskwim!
All the best and God bless!
Coach Kevin I. McCarthy
SKWIM® Global Development
In cooperation with:
1125 205th Avenue NE
Sammamish WA 98074 USA
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