Skowron’s Swim Kids Go the Distance

Private swim teacher Sharon Minasian Skowron is proud to announce that two weeks ago the Class of 2023—consisting of 25 brave young students—received their trophies upon completing their long distance freestyle swims. Minasian Skowron’s mother, Diane, gave private lessons for 46 years in her 52-foot pool in the backyard of her upper Bienveneda home, retiring in 2010 and Sharon began offering instruction herself over 40 years ago. Since then, several generations of local children have graduated.

All of Minasian Skowron’s students come to her through referrals. She primarily teaches at her house a few blocks from her mom’s and believes it is never too soon to start learning how to blow bubbles along with floating and turning over techniques. Her “pool school” kids typically range from 4-12 years old.

“All year I teach my athletes that age isn’t the most important factor in determining how long they’ll be able to swim but rather how long they’ve been swimming, how hard they’ve practiced and how often they can get in the pool to train,” Minasian Skowron said. “For example, some of the swimmers this year are older but started swimming later and only trained barely a year. Most though have learned strokes including side breadths in my weekly lessons, then moved on join one of my small one hour per week teams. They learn skills such as floating, treading and even how to do it all in heavy clothes in case they have an unexpected fall. There are four little ones this year who earned medals for what I call the “Clothed Safely Plunge.” The idea is that once they’ve experienced how it feels and what they need to do differently when clothed, hopefully they’ll panic less and help themselves out of a scary situation.”

She continued: “Some of them work each year on their technique and speed because they want to join a swim team or water polo program at places like Westside Aquatics, TSM Aquatics and LA Water Polo.  Others use swimming as cross-training for other sports and healthy movement. Surfers in the group are trying to increase their strength and endurance as they take on bigger and rougher waves. Many people ask how kids this age can swim so far and I tell them what I tell my swimmers—it’s like walking instead of running. Once you have an efficient stroke where you rock through the water and are able to take plenty of easy rolling breaths it’s like walking. While most people can’t run very far, they can walk almost forever if they have to. Therefore these kids don’t have a time limit, they just have to keep a good freestyle going and I’ll stay counting the lengths for as long as they want to go, and they often go for hours.”

Below are the 2023 graduates and their distances…

*** Click on any photo below to view slide show ***