As Drownings Surge, FitRec Offers Swim Lessons That Could Save Your Life
Year-round instruction is available to members of the BU community and the general public, children and adults
Drowning deaths are on the rise in the United States, following decades of decline, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 4,500 people died by drowning each year from 2020 to 2022, 500 more per year compared to 2019. Photo by Oscar Nord via Unsplash
As Drownings Surge, FitRec Offers Swim Lessons That Could Save Your Life
Year-round instruction is available to members of the BU community and the general public, children and adults
The COVID-19 pandemic coincided with an epidemic of drownings.
Water deaths surged to 4,500 in each of the first two years of the virus, a 12 percent increase over 2019, new federal data show. While dangerous waters claim even experienced swimmers, lack of basic swimming skills fuels many fatalities.
“Almost 40 million adults (15.4 percent) in the United States do not know how to swim,” notes a press release from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “More than one in three (36.8 percent) Black adults reported they do not know how to swim, compared to 15 percent of all adults. Additionally, two in three Black adults (63 percent) and three in four Hispanic adults (72 percent) reported never taking a swimming lesson.” As for children, the New York Times reports that drowning is the leading cause of death for children up to age 4.
The United States has largely privatized pool access; the CDC says the number of private pools dwarfs public ones by roughly 30 to 1.
So if you don’t know how to swim, you have lots of company. Boston University’s Fitness & Recreation Center (FitRec) offers year-round swimming lessons to members of the BU community and general public. More than 150 Terriers took swim classes during the 2023-2024 academic year, in addition to 500-plus other adults. More than 500 children learn swimming at FitRec, too. Registration for Summer II lessons begins June 10; find information here.
The drowning spike doesn’t surprise Justin Loughlin, assistant aquatics manager at FitRec. The pandemic’s masking and social distancing, “no pun intended, dried up the pipeline for swim lessons,” he says. “It delayed the start of some lessons for so many people. So kids who were three, four years old, who would have typically been enrolled…were waiting till they were seven or eight years old.
“A goal of ours coming out of the pandemic was to really maximize the scope of our group lessons, which we’ve been able to do,” he says. Lessons cover preschoolers to adults, beginners to the proficient, and are designed for recreational swimmers as well as those using the water for fitness workouts. Adult beginners will learn “floating, breath control, kicking, front crawl, backstroke, breaststroke, comfort in the deep end of the Recreation pool (5 feet), and treading water,” according to the FitRec website; fitness swimmers will master “technique drills, flip turns, reading a pace clock, interval training, and creating a personalized workout.”
Youth lessons cost $55 for FitRec members and $85 for non-members. Summer adult lessons vary in the number of classes offered, Loughlin says, but “the typical price breakdown is $100 for non-members and $75 for members, with five classes offered over a six-week session.”
BU Today spoke with Loughlin about the rise in drowning deaths and the lessons offered at FitRec.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Q&A
with Justin Loughlin
BU Today: Do some adults feel a stigma, a sense of embarrassment, about admitting that they don’t know how to swim?
Loughlin: Some do. One of our goals as instructors is to make sure that everyone feels comfortable, because it’s obviously a really big hurdle to come to the pool in the first place if you’re committing a significant amount of time. You have to commit to doing it once a week, and then continue to practice afterwards. It’s like playing an instrument. I took guitar lessons as a kid, and then I didn’t practice a ton. So I’m not particularly good. I can play, you know, two songs.
Maybe even more than the stigma [is] the idea of getting into a pool. That’s the bigger thing for adults. They have a developed sense of fear. And they’re far more aware of the potential dangers of being in water. Whereas a lot of kids don’t have that developed sense of fear. If people aren’t able to take lessons at a young age, it becomes a more significant hurdle in adulthood.
The CDC have [data showing] the most significant amount of drownings are children, and most drownings occur in water [in which] children can stand—it was just over their head, which is really, really unfortunate.
BU Today: What are some of the reasons people don’t learn to swim?
Loughlin: I think it’s access to swim lessons. Coastal states have significantly lower rates of drowning than interior states. And it’s just because of access to water and the viewed importance of it. Unfortunately, pools are very expensive to run, and the municipal overhead for running public pools and public swimming lessons is so significant that areas where there might not be as much money aren’t able to publicly fund swim lessons at the same rate as [wealthier] areas. There’s a disparity in access between low-income and high-income areas in terms of swim lessons. There hasn’t been significant research based on income, but I would imagine that that is a significant contributing factor as well.
The municipal overhead for running public pools and public swimming lessons is so significant that areas where there might not be as much money aren’t able to publicly fund swim lessons.
BU Today: Only a minority of colleges require students to pass a swimming test to graduate. Do you have an opinion as to whether BU should?
I do think that it would be very beneficial to require students to have to pass a swim test. [But] the logistics would be difficult. Based on the significant involvement in our [physical education] classes, I think that there are a lot of students who want to learn how to swim, but then requiring it would increase the scope of the program.
BU Today: Beyond pools, if you find yourself caught in an ocean riptide, what should you do to get out of it? If you see someone—especially a child—stuck in one, should you go in after them?
The best way to get out of them is to swim parallel to the shoreline until you’re out of the rip current, then angle back into the shoreline diagonally. If you can stay afloat and yell for help while you swim, this can help alert a lifeguard to your situation.
Anytime you see someone stuck in a rip current, you should absolutely not go in after them. Rip currents are incredibly dangerous, even for experienced swimmers. The best practice is to try to throw something that floats—a life jacket or other floatation aid—to the distressed swimmer and alert a lifeguard to the swimmer’s position in the water. If there is no lifeguard on duty, call 911 and try to maintain a line of sight on the swimmer who is caught up. A lot of drownings that occur in rip currents happen from people attempting to rescue a swimmer who is caught up in one, and it’s always best to keep both yourself and others safe by letting lifeguards or other trained emergency responders make the appropriate rescue.
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