MAKING A SPLASH
LINGUIST/TEACHER TURNED SWIM COACH AND ENTREPRENEUR BRÍD GRAHAM TELLS SORCHA CROWLEY OF THE TRAGEDY IN HER PAST THAT HAS PROPELLED HER INTO SAVING LIVES IN THE WATER
SWIM coach Bríd Graham recently stood in front of a room full of IT students like she had been kicked in the stomach. She had just asked the students if they had anyone in their family drown. One student raised his hand and said his uncle drowned off a boat in Creevy, the late Eddie Dunaher.
Bríd froze. Eddie was her father’s best friend and he drowned on her tenth birthday.
“My Dad was supposed to be there that day. He was supposed to drive up and he slept in. I grew up with Eddie in his launderette in Ballyshannon. Eddie was amazing,” she told The Sligo Champion.
“I just couldn’t believe it. I stood there like I had been kicked in the stomach. The first time I’m doing third level lecturing and who walks in only the guy whose uncle is the reason I set up my school,” she said.
Bríd is the founder of Splash, a rapidly expanding swim school based in the Clayton Hotel in Sligo.
It was only two years ago that someone turned around to her and said ‘you’re a linguist and a primary school teacher, what are you doing teaching swimming?’
“The only reason I can come up with why swimming is so important is because how awful that event was,” she reflects.
Having read Italian and German at Trinity (throw in Irish and Spanish as well) Bríd went on to train as a primary school teacher which was her ticket to the world.
In London she taught children at both ends of the socio-economic spectrum: children born in prison, born into substance abuse, child soldiers from the Congo at one end and the children of a vastly wealthy Middle Eastern family at the other end.
“I had 23 languages in my first class. We had children from tribes I’d never even heard of in Africa. It was incredible and I absolutely loved it. The Ghanaians are the Irish of Africa, they’re so much fun,” she recalls.
As a private tutor, she travelled the world, schooling two children in Canada, Egypt and Europe. Both experiences led Bríd to realise the power of connecting with children one-to-one: “I saw what could be achieved with small groups of children.”
On her return to her native Dublin in 2011, Bríd did a Masters in Business Management and met and fell in love with Riverstown farmer John Graham.
Pretty soon the couple answered the call of the West.
The transition wasn’t easy however, as permanent teaching jobs in Sligo were very scarce in 2012.
At one stage, Bríd was teaching resource in four different schools in Roscommon and Leitrim, heavily pregnant with her first child while John juggled running a café and the farm.
“I don’t know how we did it,” she says.
“I just couldn’t get work as a teacher so then decided to a bit of swim coaching as I’d done a CPD course with Irish Water Safety to become a swim teacher,” she says.
She began teaching with County Sligo Swim Club for starters and then the opportunity came up to start teaching in the Clayton hotel in September 2013.
Bríd started with just 16 pupils and Splash was born.
Today, she has over 550 pupils and seven.
“It went from strength to strength. At first it was one day a week, then four days then five days and six days and seven days.
Sunday in particular turned out to be her busiest day.
“I wasn’t very anxious to do Sunday lessons and during the worst of the downturn people kept phoning me and saying ‘ listen my husband’s away working in Dublin all week and he does nothing with the children at the weekends’ or ‘My parents are looking after the children. We come home at weekends, is there something we can do with them?’
“I remember putting up the ad and I had 58 pupils that day alone for a Sunday,” she says.
What sets Splash apart as a swim school is Bríd’s insistance on a low pupil-teacher ratio (a maximum of four per class) coupled with a stringent safety criteria.
The swim coach is in the water with them to “scaffold their security, independence and build a sense of achievement for the children.”
They consistently have the same teacher as their swimming progresses so the expectations increase and they’re not changing teachers every term.
“After parents and school teachers, a sports coach can be the third most influential person in a child’s life,” says Bríd.
“We’re all different learners and that has to be catered for - we get to do that in the swimming. Developing strong bonds between coach and learner is key to success in the water she believes.
“For us eye contact is so important, asking about their week, asking whether the dog came back from the vet - a relationship with the children is so important. It could be the only 25 minutes of the week that child gets to achieve.
“I’ve had parents phone me in tears saying ‘yours is the first positive report I’ve ever had about my child’ and I’m thinking we’re not talking about the same child. We feel like we give the parents confidence with their children and the children give us so much - they’re just fabulous.
“What underpins our selling points are our relationship with the families and the children. It’s really important the parents can see what’s going on. I want them to be able to reproduce what we’re doing so the children progress,” she says.
Bríd and her team of local swim teachers want swimming to be seen as part of every child’s education, not an extra-curricular add-on “which is great craic.” As for life-saving, “that goes without saying,” adds Bríd.
Next Thursday, June 21st, Splash will be the first Irish Swim school to participate in the World’s Largest Swim Lesson to help spread the Swimming Lessons Saves Lives message around Sligo. www. facebook.com/splashswim2/www.splashswim.ie
IT COULD BE THE ONLY 25 MINUTES OF THE WEEK THAT CHILD GETS TO ACHIEVE