Sam passed his swim test today so he was able to take his first jump off a diving board, too! Video avail. by clicking on photo.

Proud of Sam would be a major understatement! Team Krug threw a few fistpumps in the air as we left the pool today… From being completely comfortable in the ocean yet nervous in a pool, Sam has developed into a very natural monk seal 😉 With Dad as his constant and gentle guiding hand, he has never had a swim lesson. He’s developed some natural strokes based on what we see our ocean friends do (such as “turtle”) and he’s picked up the crawl fairly recently. He’s so comfortable under water that it takes a lot of  exhorting to get him to do anything along the surface :0 So it was with some trepidation that I’ve contemplated taking him over for the swim test at the base pool…for several reasons: 1) he’s never seen a pool this big (50 m is monstrous), 2) I wasn’t sure he’d stick with the task at hand (25 m swim and 2 minute tread). But with his friends all in their second or third years of swim lessons, and some of them passing the swim test so they can do the water slide and diving board, etc., it was time to get with the program and let Sam take a stab at it.

So, after church today we went to check out the pool, talk to the lifeguards, and assess the scope of the test. Then we went to the playground, had lunch, and came back well prepared (and hot enough to want to jump in!).  A lifeguard was free to do the test so away we went. He did the 25 m swim great – was a little nervous and not breathing calmly like normal, and forgot to kick for much of the length. Then he did the 2 min tread, which I was most nervous about as he loves to swim under the water. I can’t get him to keep his head up long enough to say anything to him! But he did it! Man was I proud! After all that he got a wrist band to show that he passed and we got to jump in the water. Ben was very happy about that – he was fussing in my ear during Sam’s entire test wanting to jump in, too. Oy. After a bit they opened the diving board. This was the next big deal of the day. His friends taking swim lessons have been around these but we have been jumping off lava shelves and stuff, so the diving board sticking way out over the water was something to be reckoned with. (He’d never even seen one before, so yesterday I showed him one on YouTube as a sneak preview.) Sam asked a bunch of questions, was nervous, walked down the board, said he didn’t want to do, came back. Did that several times. We talked, had a team huddle, decided to jump off the side of the pool a couple times, and then he decided to just do it. It was time (Ben was really getting mad now, having been in the pool then had to get out to go to the big kid area with Sam but not able to get back in over there.) Once he jumped, he loved it, as I knew he would. I well remember my first diving board experience and it was awful – killed a love of the water until I was over 30 and decided I just needed to teach myself to swim again and then got SCUBA certified. (In my case I remember the Y pool, indoors, loud, chlorine smell, white caps on the water it seemed so forboding, and a large lady named Ursula yelling from the pool to JUMP!)

My most sincere hope is that Sam has fond memories of his first days in a big pool and continues his love of the water. I am really floored by his composure and maturity handling the swim test, then overcoming nervousness about the board. There were no other kids even in the deep end (which gets to 18 ft!) when he was on the board thinking about jumping. Oh, and there were 25 Canadian frogmen doing helicopter pilot drownproofing in this vast pool. And there’s a huge contraption for lowering a makeshift helicopter into the deep end to help pilots figure out how to get out of a crashed helicopter. So you’ve got all this intense military stuff going on in the pool – a tad intimidating I thought. On our way out we talked to one of the “frogmen” – they were probably helicopter pilots but thinking about frogmen was super cool – anway I asked them if they were nervous before their test and they were like “Heck yeah! I don’t much like getting belted into a contraption then spun upside down!” Sam noted that even big guys do things that make them nervous, too. And he was a great coach when mom decided to jump the high dive!!!!

I put together clips of his day, including a movie of his first jump. Enjoy 🙂