Swim into Summer

Joy Swim School uses unique model to teach area kids skills in the pool

BY RACHEL MADISON STAFF WRITER

When Joy McCain was just a baby, she’d go to work with her dad all the time. He taught swimming lessons, and she was frequently used as the “demo baby” to show other parents what to do with their young children in the pool. Fast forward to adulthood and five children of her own, and McCain hasn’t strayed too far from her beginnings.

“I’ve been doing swimming lessons in one form or another since I was an infant,” McCain said. “My dad’s philosophies from teaching lessons was engrained in me, and I kept those going as I started my own business in Texas.”

McCain moved to Texas from California in 2007, and started teaching swimming lessons locally that summer. She settled first in the Cedar Park area but has since moved to a farm in Bertram. Joy Swim School has been an option for swimming lessons in Liberty Hill since 2010.

For the longest time, McCain would have to turn people away because her client list for Joy Swim School, as she started calling it, would fill up for the summer in just a week. After a couple of summers of turning potential clients away, she decided to grow her business by training more instructors in her way of teaching. Since then, the amount of clients Joy Swim School serves nearly doubles every summer and she has instructors in towns across the Austin area.

The philosophy McCain swears by for her swim school is “together we can,” which to her means that the instructors will build trust with their students while helping them understand they can do hard things.

“We teach our students that we’ll do the hard things together, and we do give them a little tough love, but we also just don’t dunk them over and over in the water,” she said. “It’s a good balance between building trust and telling them, ‘You are going to do this, but I will keep you safe.’”

The expansion of the business has happened organically, McCain said, adding that the swim school’s come-to-the-client model has helped a lot. The areas she sends instructors to are really based on need and client volume.

“If a new person contacts us and they have enough clients in their area for us to send an instructor to them, then we can do it,” she added. “The demand continues to grow, because our service is a different type of service than what some of these bigger swim schools offer. People aren’t calling it apples to apples anymore— they are realizing the come-to-you service is fantastic.”

To maintain high quality instructors, McCain said she’ll know after one season if her instructors are going to work out.

“We offer a caliber of service we’re known for, so if I train someone and they don’t work out, they aren’t coming back,” she said. “The ones that are really great will be invited back and given a raise the next season.”

Last summer, Joy Swim School served about 700 families with 15 instructors. McCain hopes to hire 20 instructors this summer so that even more families can be served.

“Most of my instructors are college-aged to young moms, or teachers who aren’t working in the summer,” she said. “Every single instructor spends two weeks with me in the pool learning the program. All I teach is the program and philosophy, and I hire my instructors based on genuinely liking kids and having patience.”

In the future, McCain plans to film a series of training videos for parents who don’t live in the school’s service area so they can subscribe and learn how to teach the skills to their kids from wherever they are.

“Teaching these kids for the last several years has been so rewarding and fun,” McCain said. “Every kid is different—they develop differently, learn how to breathe differently and tread water differently. What makes our program unique is that it’s individualized. It’s student driven, not curriculum driven.”

Liberty Hill resident Mary Linn King has been using Joy Swim School for six years. Her oldest daughter has completed the entire program, while her youngest hopes to graduate this summer.

“I would never go anywhere else,” King said. “We have never put our kids in floaties and we’ve been adamant about them learning to swim and feeling comfortable in the water. Joy has made it easy for them to build on their skills every summer, so they know what is coming.”

Liberty Hill resident Kari Pavlenko’s daughter has also been taking lessons through Joy Swim School for the last two summers.

“This program is the best money I’ve ever spent,” she said. “I’ve seen the results over the last two years with my daughter, and I really believe she can teach any child to swim. She has used our pool to teach lessons, so I’ve been able to watch all different kids with all different personalities learn to swim.”

McCain’s program doesn’t just teach kids, either. She has a growing number of adult clients who have never learned to swim and want to take swimming lessons.

“One of my favorite things to do is teach adults who haven’t learned how to swim that they can do it,” she said. “They get so excited about conquering that.”

She also offers infant water safety classes for babies from six months to two years of age in the form of parent-tot classes.

“We teach reflexive water safety skills in this class, so we aren’t just throwing the kids into the pool or just having them blow bubbles in the water,” McCain said. “We provide a much more relational and less intense environment, and we teach parents how to help their babies hold their breath safely, float on their backs, climb in and out of the pool and turn around if they fall in and reach the wall. I say if your child can crawl or walk to the edge of a pool, they need swimming lessons.”

McCain also has instructors who are available to teach kids with special needs.

“That is a growing community and population, and I’ve been told by clients that other swim schools won’t work with their kids,” she said. “But I have some nurses and some special education teachers on my roster, who for them, nonverbal autism is no big deal. I’ve worked with kids who are wheelchair bound and can’t walk, but they can do the butterfly stroke.”

McCain added that teaching kids with