Fry's Spring Beach Club Offers Swimming Scholarships - NBC29 WVIR Charlottesville, VA News, Sports and Weather
Fry's Spring Beach Club Offers Swimming Scholarships - NBC29 WVIR Charlottesville, VA News, Sports and Weather
Children who don't know how to swim can feel left out of many summer activities. What's worse is this can leave them at risk for serious accidents.
That's why the
Fry's Spring Beach Club is offering scholarships to kids, many from other countries, who otherwise might not have the opportunity to learn this lifesaving skill.
"A lot of the kids that we had met didn't know how to swim at all, you know, they were from refugee camps in Africa and their parents had never swum. Their families were very afraid of the water," said swim coach Clara Bullard.
So starting with just one kid sponsored by swim team families, little by little a scholarship program began.
Ayat Mohamed is one of the scholarship swimmers. He was born in a refugee camp in Kenya in 2001, to Somalian parents who were forced to leave their home country during the civil war.
Mohamed's family later moved to Charlottesville through the help of the International Rescue Committee. In the past few years, Mohamed has gone from not being able to swim at all to being a strong competitor in the
Jefferson Swim League meets.
"When I started I was afraid I was going to drown or something and then I got in the water and it felt good and then I wasn't scared anymore," he said.
The Fry's Spring Beach Club's swim team includes over 25 scholarship swimmers from Charlottesville and Albemarle County. Several of these swimmers, like Mohamed, moved to the U.S. with their families from other countries such as Somalia, Tanzania, Mexico, and Ethiopia.
The vast majority of scholarship swimmers came onto the team with little or no swimming experience, many from non-swimming families. For those kids, the club waives the $800 membership fee, and provides scholarships for the fee to join the swim team.
"I used to be the slowest swimmer, but then I got faster and now I'm better than most of the people now," said Hussein Osman, another scholarship swimmer.
Many of the kids spend their entire summer at the Fry's Spring pool. "We come at morning, when it opens, all the way until it closes, every day," Osman said.
"Their swimming gets better, but also just their friendships," Bullard said.
But learning how to swim is about a lot more than just fun for these kids. It's about learning to survive if they're ever in enough water to drown.
Bullard said, "I think it's really important because it's giving these kids a life skill."
Benjamin Hair Just Swim for Life Foundation provides grants that fund the scholarship swimmers. All of the scholarship swimmers on the team this year are now "swimming safe", meaning that they can swim in deep water without assistance and will never have to fear accidental drowning.
"Just to see the different kids playing around here, it's such a mix of people from different places, from different races, from different backgrounds and they're all able to come together," said Bullard.
Mohamed said, "You just want to like play around, move around, do stuff in the water and play with your friends."
Many of the kids, who just years ago were afraid of water and unable to swim, will now be competing in the Jefferson Swim League Championships starting on Friday.
Did you just move to C'ville? Did I tell you about all things Charlottesville? If not, please read this!
Hookipedia | The Hook - Charlottesville's weekly newspaper, news magazine
The JPA Bridge - A monument to thoughtful planning– and seemingly interminable planning. The
new bridge is supposed to reopen in September– a whopping 18 months after the old one closed.
Peter Chang - Our newest celebrity. We're not sure if he actually lives here, but since 2009 he's been drawing crowds from across the East Coast with his unique Chinese cuisine. His eponymous restaurant at Barracks Road opened in 2011.
Weddings & wine - The new backbones of Charlottesville's tourism industry– along with scads of restaurants and those two traditional favorites: Monticello and the University of Virginia.
Downtown Mall - An oasis of hipsterdom and a rare urban success story. Built in 1976, expanded in 1985, crossed by traffic in 1995. It's where the action is– at least on warm Fridays.
The Dave - Used to be the bartender at Downtown pub Miller's until he threw it all away to start a
band. Whoever heard of a violin and sax in a rock group, anyway?
Fridays After 5 - Free summer concert series held at the east end of the Downtown Mall. Audiences used to sit on a grassy hill that was bulldozed in favor of the 3,500-seat cement-floored nTelos Wireless Pavilion.
The Grounds - UVA doesn't have a "campus," it has the Grounds. (And it wasn't built by "TJ"; it was founded by "Mr. Jefferson.") And there's no such thing as a freshman. It's "first year," please.
The Lawn - The original grounds of UVA. Streaking the length of it is considered a rite of passage for students.
The JPJ - This has become the standard moniker for UVA's 16,000-seat, $130-million John Paul Jones Arena, opened in 2006. No, it's not named for the Led Zeppelin bassist. Instead, the man who said
we should all be "elated" by the ouster of UVA President Teresa Sullivan, Paul Tudor Jones II, promised $30 million for the project and got the building named for his father, a Memphis attorney and UVA Law grad.
The Corner - Five blocks of fun. According to historian Coy Barefoot, students began using this moniker for the intersection of University Avenue and the central entrance to the University Grounds (where the fancy "honor" gate was erected in 1915) by 1902. The name stuck, and now it's also the name of the radio station at 106.1 FM.
Timberlake's - The town's olde tyme drugstore downtown. Still delivers. Still has a lunch counter with homemade soup and real ice-cream sodas. The fireplace is a local gathering spot in winter.
Garrett Square - The old-school name for the low-income housing complex near the Downtown Mall now called "Friendship Court."
Recycling - Next to the water wars, our biggest civic dispute. At the center is a soft-spoken guy named
Peter van der Linde, who upset the apple cart in 2009 by quietly opening a "dirty MuRF," a place that lets your trash man collect everything in one giant bin before it gets sorted. Since then, he's been sued under RICO, vandalized, and now the his biggest competitor
claims he's contaminating the waste.
Louisa - We never really knew much about you (beyond Lake Anna and Jack Jouett) until August 23, 2011 when a
5.8 tremor struck near the town of Mineral and reverberated across the East Coast.
Three Chopt Road - Also known as Three
Notched Road, this Colonial version of a highway is essentially the path of today's Route 250, including such historic stretches as the Downtown Mall and West Main Street.
Sacagawea - According to
National Geographic, she's the subject of more statues than any other American woman, including the local one with her crouching on West Main Street with the two best-known members of the Lewis & Clark exploration. (We're still holding out for a statue of York, the Albemarle-based slave on the trip.)
Blue Hole - The dreamy little swimming spot on the south fork of the Upper Moormans River, this idyllic place suffered a vandalism in mid 2012 that could lessen its status as what lawyers call an "attractive nuisance,"
the buzz-saw removal of the tree that held the rope swing. Perp unknown.
The Omni - Built by City Council vote and lots of taxpayer dollars in the mid-1980s, it's simultaneously a symbol of government excess and a really nice place to stay if you want to stroll the Downtown Mall. The owners recently got outbid on the shell of the next place (see below).
The Landmark - What should by now have been a fully realized luxury hotel remains a hulking skeleton looming over downtown as former owner
Halsey Minor battled it out with banks and a former business partner. Will it ever be built? In June of 2012, a Waynesboro-born man
made the high bid on the shell with plans to move forward
.
Bodo's - Charlottesville's fastest bagels and slowest opening schedule. The former owner hung a "coming soon" banner on the Corner location in 1995 but didn't
open the third jewel in his bagel crown for a decade. He later sold each restaurant to its respective manager.
Queen Charlotte Sophia
Wife of King George III, against whom the colonists fought the Revolution. Fourteen years before we waged war against the mother country, the General Assembly of the Virginia Colony named the seat of Albemarle County for this young lady.
The White Spot
It's just a restaurant, but no glossary of the town is complete without mentioning this Corner mainstay and its Gusburger and Grillswith.
Teresa Sullivan - Charlottesville's newest rock star was enshrined in the hearts of Wahoo Nation in June when two members of the governing board decided they knew best and forced her resignation. The ensuing outcry made headlines across the country and brought about her reinstatement after two weeks.
Farmington Country Club - Still considered the swankiest place to swing a club, but the past coupla decades have brought stiff competition from Keswick, Glenmore, and UVA-backed Boar's Head.
Jack Jouett - If there had been a southern poet as sharp as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, schoolchildren might be reading less about Paul Revere and more about this guy, who warned TJ away from death or capture when the British invaded Charlottesville in 1781. Camping out on the lawn of the Cuckoo Tavern in Louisa, he spotted British soldiers moving toward Charlottesville and
took off on his trusty steed to spread the alarm.
Beta Bridge - Built over the C&O (now CSX/Buckingham Branch) tracks in 1924 as part of a city-wide public works improvement project, it's now Charlottesville's most famous site for public art. Memorable messages: "Hoos for Hokies," painted after the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech, and 2012's "Sullivan– you are not alone" each remained for about a month.
Jefferson Cup - Designed by the man himself, this low-volume pewter goblet adorns many a high school and college graduate's shelf of unused drinking vessels.
Three presidents - Besides the ever-present "Mr. Jefferson," Central Virginia lays claim to at least two other presidents:
James Madison, whose home, Montpelier, is in nearby Orange County, and
James Monroe, whose more modest digs, Ash-Lawn Highland, sit just past Monticello on Route 53. (Just over the mountain, a fourth prez,
Woodrow Wilson, was born in Staunton.)
Foxfield - Who knew that the quest for a nice little horse race in Charlottesville would lead to a rite of spring that has replaced a notorious annual UVA bacchanalian fest known as "Easters"?
Sally Hemings - TJ's love interest (and his property) under the crazy world that was the Colonial era. Probably buried under the Hampton Inn on West Main. City leaders opted
not to rename 10th Street for her a few years ago.
The car bumper statue - That big silver statue outside St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church on Alderman Road
is actually made out of old car bumpers. Sculptor/priest Father Henry Mascotte created a statue of a meditating Aquinas in the mid-1960s by piecing together auto salvage from around South Bend, Indiana.
Biscuit Run - A state park that will eventually open on the southwest side of town. Also,
the real estate deal that showed that the super-rich developers really do play from a special rule book.
Peter Jefferson and Martha Jefferson - Besides being an office park and a hospital, these are actual people from back in the day. Peter was a county surveyor who built a house in Shadwell in 1735 (which burned down), but his greater fame came from having a famous son. Martha was TJ's wife who bore him a daughter of the same name after whom the hospital is named. After the elder Martha died in 1782, Jefferson vowed never to remarry, opting to remain a widower for the next 44 years. His vow apparently did not preclude intimacy, however (see above, Sally Hemings).
Vinegar Hill - Considered a slum, this racially mixed but mostly African-American neighborhood of homes and businesses was bulldozed in the early 1960s when "urban renewal" was all the rage. (The art house movie theater by this name opened in 1976.)
Didja know?
"Rio," which means "river" in Spanish, was the name of long-gone mill complex on
Rio Road because of its proximity to the Rivanna River. While the Spanish word is pronounced "Ree-o," locals have long opted for the long "i" sound perhaps because it fit with the local pronunciation of the "RY-vanna" river. No one knows for sure, but they do know this: it was never Route 10.
