Swim Lessons

Predominantly black swim team is busy opening up opportunities and minds

By AKILAH IMANI NELSON - ainelson@thestate.com

The cool water laps gently against the sides of the pool at Greenview Park.

It is an invitation, and one by one, the 54 members of the Greenview Dolphins swim team accept.

Drawn from across the city, Greenview’s swimmers are, with a few exceptions, black. Though in the majority on the Dolphins team, the black swimmers are minorities in a sport long dominated by whites.

While a few black swimmers can be found on other Columbia-area teams, the Greenview squad is the only one consisting primarily of minorities.

Greenview joins with a team from Maxcy Gregg Park to form the Columbia Parks and Recreation Department team that is competing in the Columbia Swimming League city tournament this weekend.

“We’re just trying to give the minority kids another choice, allow them to think outside just the traditional sports and still have the experience of being on a team,” said coach Stanley McIntosh, who swam at S.C. State and has been a swimming coach for 31 years.

McIntosh and his assistant coaches, Jerry Young and Juliet Sheridan, make sure the Greenview team experience is about more than swimming.

“We take swimming as an avenue, a way to better your life, in general, not just to become a better swimmer. We talk about what’s going on in school; we talk about the role that God plays in our lives; we talk about and do a lot of things that are just not part of what you get on other teams,” said Sheridan, 19, who swam for 13 years with the Hunting Creek Swimming & Racquet Club team. She is in her second year with Greenview.

Ovetta Robinson-Heyward, a lifelong swimmer and president of the Greenview parents association, touts the social benefits of Greenview’s year-round program.

“It’s teaching them fitness and nutrition, leadership, it’s making them community-oriented,” said Robinson-Heyward, whose 13-year-old son, Taliaferro, is a Dolphin. “You have kids that are less likely to get involved in delinquent activities.”

The team practices two nights per week and Saturday mornings. McIntosh and Young check on swimmers at school during the year. In May, a team field trip is free for students who have “A” averages.

When swimmers reach 15 years old, they became certified lifeguards.

“It’s a great opportunity for our kids,” Robinson-Heyward said.

“Most kids should get active in some sport,” her son, Taliaferro, said. “When I first started out swimming, I didn’t really want to do it. I thought of myself more as a football player. But the swim team is cool, too.”

The swim-team experience is one that black youths seldom take advantage of, largely due to the perception that competitive swimming is a country-club sport — a view fueled by a lack of access that spanned generations.

“We grew up with parents and grandparents who told you to stay away from that water, told you it was dangerous. And a lot of us passed that fear on to our children,” said Shawna Martin-Lyde, the mother of a swim-team member.

According to a 2006 survey by USA Swimming, 58 percent of black youths do not know how to swim. The rate of drownings among black children is nearly three times the overall rate, the organization states.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Martin-Lyde, who took swimming lessons at the age of 25. She put daughter Vinez, 9, in swim lessons as a toddler “just for safety purposes.”

Swim lessons are McIntosh’s opening.

“That’s where we get most of our swimmers from. When we see a kid with some skills, we try to talk to the parents and have them to bring the kids out with the team,” McIntosh said.

More kids are approaching their parents about swimming, too, McIntosh said.

“We’re in a more diverse world now, and our children want to do more different things. And more parents want to expose their children to new experiences.”

Still, it is sometimes difficult for parents to embrace those new experiences.

Robinson-Heyward remembered when Marquise Snipes first showed up at the pool.

“He was so scared; he didn’t want the water to touch his face or anything. His mother was scared, and she just wanted to go get him,” she said. “But as parents, we all just help each other out. So we helped her get through that, and within a month it was like he had been born in the water.”

By the time Snipes reached eighth-grade last year, he was good enough to swim for Irmo’s varsity squad.

Many of his friends are kids from the swim team, white kids. His black friends mostly play basketball or football, Snipes said.

“Sometimes, they say to me, ‘black people don’t swim.’ And I say “Well, I do.’”

McIntosh makes sure his pupils know they are not alone. Each May for the past three years, the Dolphins have traveled to the Black Heritage Swim Meet, which gives the Dolphins a different perspective.

There, the Dolphins are not the only blacks on the pool deck.

“We use that to show them that black people do swim, all across the country, and swim well,” McIntosh said.

The meet provides team members the opportunity to meet successful black swimmers, such as World Champion and Olympic medalist Cullen Jones.

Vinez Martin-Lyde was tickled by the experience.

“It was really great to see many people that are the same color as me enjoying something that I enjoy because it isn’t always like that,” she said, wrapped in a towel and shivering as darkness settled over the pool at the end of practice.

In Columbia, Sheridan knows competing in a mostly white league can pose challenges.

“Coming from the country-club teams, I know there are prejudices out there that these (black) kids face when they are competing, and I’m even more proud of these kids because they still go and they still compete, even in places where people are already against them just because they show up,” Sheridan said.

Though the backgrounds of the Dolphins’ team members differ from those of swimmers on other teams, the reasons they swim are the same: They love it, and they want to be good at it.

Martin-Lyde is thriving in the pool — to a greater degree than her parents expected.

“Now our goal as parents is to put her in a situation where it would benefit her,” her mother said.

College scholarships exist for minorities who are underrepresented in nontraditional sports, and Greenview coaches and officials want to capitalize.

“We’re not guaranteeing they are going to swim in the Olympics or get a scholarship, but at least they are going to have an opportunity,” Young said while gesturing towards the bobbing heads in the pool.

And the Columbia Swim League shares the Dolphins’ commitment.

“We want all the kids we can to participate,” said league president William Hunter, who joined the league as a 6-year-old swimmer representing Rock Bridge Country Club

“With the CSL, we really strive to give every kid a chance to swim.”And for those who are unsure where they fit in, there is always room in the pool at Greenview Park.

Reach Nelson at (803) 771-8419.