275 BAY HUNDRED NEW SWIMMERS GRADUATE WITH A SPLASH
“SOS: Sink or Swim” new swimmers at the August 22 graduation party at the St. Michaels Bay Hundred Pool.
Several hundred Talbot County children and their parents celebrated their “graduation” last Friday night from the St. Michaels Community Center’s “Bay Hundred Swim Kids” program with a party at the St. Michaels Bay Hundred Pool. During the summer, 275 non-swimmers learned how to swim in the program.
The effort is part of the Miles River Yacht Club Foundation’s “SOS: Sink or Swim” initiative to teach all Talbot County children under 15 how to swim in the next five years. The Foundation provided funding to pay for instructors, give full tuition scholarships to all the children, offer them free admission to the pool for the summer so they could reinforce their new swimming capability, and give them Bay Hundred Swim Kids tee shirts so they can take pride in their new accomplishment. The non-swimmers were enrolled by the St. Michaels Community Center and Critchlow Atkins Childrens Center.
The graduation party, underwritten by private donors, offered the new young swimming graduates a disc jockey, swimming, pizza and much more.
Dr. Sherry Manning, Chairman of the MRYC Foundation, said “we deplore the number of drownings we see in the Bay, ponds, rivers and pools every year. We think knowing how to swim is a basic life skill that every child in Talbot County should have, a prelude to being a boater, and an athletic accomplishment that will enrich every child’s life. ”
In its first three years of grant-making, the MRYC Foundation has supported 21 Chesapeake Bay area non-profits with $138,499 in grants, teaching thousands of children sailing, safe boating, swimming, canoeing, kayaking, competitive rowing, teamwork, and an appreciation and caring for the fragility and beauty of the Chesapeake Bay. It hopes to expand the “SOS: Sink or Swim” program in 2015.
