By Chéye Roberson
Sentinel Reporter
Members of the Boys & Girls club of Greenwich enjoyed giving back to the organization by swimming several laps in the club’s pool to raise funds during their annual Swim-A-Thon.
For the Swim-A-Thon, held last Saturday morning, each swimmer had a sponsor who would donate a certain amount of money for each lap the swimmer swam. The club set their fundraising goal at $20,000. By 11 a.m. the club had raised at $10,000, halfway to their goal. Additional funds are still coming in from sponsors.
Greenwich Police Lt. Rick Cochran, who teaches honor guard at the club, was there from the beginning—8 a.m.—to show his support. He swam 136 laps.
“I’ve been down here teaching honor guard for the last 17 years, and I’m here every Thursday,” Cochran said. “I’ve seen kids grow from seven years old all the way up to 22 or 23 years old. I’ve seen them all the way through college. It’s something I firmly believe in—helping out the youth of Greenwich. So I donate my time down here.”
In the beginning, each swimmer pledged to swim a certain amount of laps in the pool. Wilson Marroquin, 6, swam 22 laps while his proud father looked on.
“This is great. This is a great place. Kids should take advantage of this place. This is the best place around town,” said his father, Jimi Marroquin. “I’m really happy every time they have an event I try to put my kids in there and teach them to do things for people, do things for the place—I like that.”
Ten-year-old Joy Serdena, a member of the Boys & Girls club swim team, the Barracudas, swam 127 laps.
“It’s good for the club. It’s good to help. She really enjoys swimming, so I’m happy for her,” said her mother, Roqueta Serdena.
If the swimmers swam more than they originally pledged, “The parents or children go back to the people that sponsor them and, I think, nine times out of 10 the sponsor will give them more money,” said Anne Bradner, vice president for development of the Boys & Girls Club of Greenwich.
Bradner pointed to the underlying messages of the Swim-A-Thon, which the Boys & Girls Club tries to instill in its members.
“What all the people who work here with the young children talk about is teaching them not to say ‘I can’t,’ but ‘I can,’” said Bradner. “And that’s a fundamental principle of everything we do at the Boys & Girls Club—it’s making kids feel powerful. ‘I can do this.’”
She added, “Second, at the center of what we do, is teaching kids to give back to communities. They’re swimming, and they’re talking to their neighbors, and they’re getting sponsors, which allows them to give back at an early age.”
Bradner said this often affects the future career choices of their members.
“One of the things we’re really pleased with is how many of our teens go off to college and are interested in pursuing more community service in college and sometimes even going into it professionally because they find great satisfaction from helping others,” said Brander. “And you’re talking about kids who don’t necessarily have a lot to start out with. And so to be putting citizens like that into the world is really meaningful.”
Bobby Walker, Jr., the CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of Greenwich, said it’s critical for the club to be able to offer its programs to people who otherwise would be unable to afford them.
“One of the things that’s really important to us at the club is that when you talk about accessibility and opportunities it really shouldn’t be based on how much money a family does or does not have,” said Walker, Jr.
Swimming lessons usually cost much more than the price offered at the Boys & Girls Club.
“Everywhere you go, that’s an expensive thing to teach a child, but here it’s part of the membership, said Walker. “We also have swimming lessons for kids in the summer camp and somewhere else those 10 weeks can cost $400 to $500, and here it’s $50. And that’s something that’s really important to us as an organization, to keep it that way so that any child in town that wants to learn how to swim has a reasonable opportunity to learn here.”
Walker wants parents to know the cheaper price does not equal lower quality.
“I think that when people here that price they think, ‘Oh, well, then they’re not real swim lessons,’” Walker said. “All of our swim instructors are Red Cross certified.”
