 Hi, I'm Doug Bishop, Director of Communications at the Greater Burlington YMCA and welcome to Y Connection. This is a monthly opportunity that we have. Thank you to Channel 17, CCTV. For the YMCA to connect with you, the community, let you know what's going on at the Y and to share some tips for healthier living, water safety and other things we know that are important to all of you. I'm joined this month once again. We're glad to have back Jess Lucas, our Director of Aquatics. Welcome, Jess. Thanks, Doug. So we have a pretty exciting conversation to have because we are, after talking about a few other things, going to turn our attention to our brand new building set to open January 1st. I think that's the first time perhaps we've said that on this program, is the firm date of January 1st. So that's exciting for us. So before we dive into no pun intended, I just slip out the new building and I should let the viewers know that we're going to actually have a very exciting digital animation that our architects put together that will show a bit later in the program of a walk through a part of the building and we'll really get a chance to see the pools, which is your domain. But before we do that, I want to touch a little bit on the Y's role in healthy living in the community and talk about aquatics. So who are Y Aquatics programs for? Absolutely. Aquatics is truly for everyone. You can start swimming with your family at a very young age. We start our program traditionally at six months, but you can be bringing infants into the water at young, young weeks, months old, and then we go right through our aging population. It's a great low impact exercise. So truly, truly any age aquatics is a wonderful activity. Yeah, I talked to more and more active older adults. I think maybe is what we're saying now and this includes myself, but that people are getting recommendations from physicians or physical therapists about getting in the water because of that low impact nature. So it's a wonderful opportunity. And we also want to make sure that it's available to people of all different abilities, right? So we have adaptive swim programs that we focus on that we'll touch on a bit. But again, making sure that why aquatics is there for everybody. Absolutely. I just had a conversation with one of our members the other day who's on a long-term recovery from breaking her leg. And so we had a lot of conversation about the low impact nature and how water can help in that recovery process while she can't pound the pavement sort of speak in her traditional running. So it's really good for any person of any ability. And then you talked a little bit about our adaptive programming. Really any children, any adult, they find it a very soothing activity, which is so beneficial not only physically, but mentally as well. It feels good to be in the water. It makes most of us smile when we think about being in the water. What you say what people think about most perhaps with the Y and we always want them to know we're more than swim lessons, but the swim lessons, it's been a part of the Y's history for a long time, part of our Y since we opened our current building that we'll be in just for another six weeks. But we had a pool in 1934. Basically, since that time, we've been doing swim lessons in one form or another. So how does that Y operate with respect to swim lessons? Who's that available to? Absolutely. So swim lessons are open to anybody. We do teach adult lessons. We do those on a private basis. But mostly you hear about some lessons with kids when you talk to people, not only in our community, but as you said nationwide, it's like, oh, where did you learn how to swim? The Y, most of us learned. So we start our progressive programming at six months in a caregiver child capacity through age three. And then we go ages three and up. So you're seeing the most of our children are ages three to 15 years old. And then hopefully that leads to a track of either swim team and or a lifeguarding class. And so our traditional swim lessons, we run all year and seven to eight week periods. We have six, what we call sessions throughout the year. And it is a progressive program in program. So we're grouping them not only by age, but then also by their ability. So that way they're learning skills. They're moving up to new groups as they master their skills. It's great. You talked about the progression we see with some swimmers, how they go from lessons to joining our youth swim program or swim team, Dynamo Swim or ultimately perhaps become a lifeguard. But our chief goal and what makes us happy about seeing about 1000 kids a year come through why swim lessons is giving kids that basic life skill. We talk about it not as a nice to have, but sort of a necessity, a have to have some level of water safety or swim. And so that that basic water safety, we extend that past the traditional swim lessons, right, and take water safety skills into the community with various groups we work with. Absolutely. Here we obviously have many bodies of Water Lake Champlain being the largest, but many people have ponds on their personal property. They have lake homes on other lakes. So we do take water, water safety very, very serious as does the YMCA. It is part a component of traditional swim lessons. So in looking at some of our swim lesson programs, but also our community partners, such as some of our local schools, Burlington Parks Rec and Waterfront is a huge community collaboration with us where we are having families come in, we talk about water safety skills, and then we get to practice those in the water. It seems a little funny right now. There's already snow on the ground to talk about water safety, but it's something I think is important to talk about all year, not just when the ice melts because as we get ready for the holidays, people might be going to hotels that have pools. You might be traveling to warmer states where there are still outdoor pools. So it's something to still really keep in mind that we want to make sure that we are never swimming alone, that children know there needs to be adults. We call them water watchers. So that way they are watching children actively. Not on your phone. When you say active watching, it's if you and I are there, one of us should always have our eyes on the kids that are with us, right? Exactly. And that needs to be a designated person because we don't want to assume. I don't want to assume that someone is watching the kids. It needs to be a conversation to know that I'm the one not on a device solely watching people in the pool. And you want to make sure also as adults that you're never swimming alone. I think I'm a pretty good swimmer. I should never swim alone because I could get a leg cramp and that could become very, very serious. So you want to have a designated water watcher, which in our line of work is a lifeguard ideally. But I know that sometimes again, hotel pools might not have those lifeguards. So make sure you designate a friend or family member to do that. And there's some little saying or phrase that I've heard you mention on this program and other places before. If you're at that pool or if you're outside someplace and someone gets in trouble, you talk about reach, throw, don't go. So it's extending pool noodle stick if you're outside, if possible, to get someone that they can grab onto because someone who's in trouble in the water acts out and makes it challenging for someone who isn't a skilled lifeguard to support them. So you reach, you throw something to them, but don't go right in or two people may be then in trouble. Exactly. In talking about some of these water safety programs, talked about some connections and affiliations we have with local schools that I know a special connection we have over at the Integrated Arts Academy with their step class or studying towards English proficiency. Correct. So those are new Americans who are in a class there. And we also focus through our summer program Camp Splash in trying to reach the new American population to bring basic water safety skills, right? Yeah, I'm very excited. It's a long standing relationship, not only with the Integrated Arts School, but then also we collaborate with University of Vermont Medical Center and Dr. Andrea Green there. And those are some great relationships that have grown over a number of years now to the point where we're serving over 100 children through those programs focused in the spring and summer months to make sure that we are teaching pool rules and water safety. And along that also shallow versus deep and talking about some of that vocabulary. Before turning in just a moment to the new building, I want to touch on two other points quickly. One is our swim team. And I'll just share my personal feelings about our swim team is there are some swimmers there that are incredibly competent and competitive. We have a swimmer who's competed nationally the last two years on behalf of our Y representing us and she's done fantastic work in the pool. But it's the mentoring that I see go on between our swim coaches and the kids and the opportunity to give them the feeling of knowing what they can accomplish. You must see that. Absolutely, absolutely. And that stems from our head coach Jackson. He's just an amazing mentor, a mentor for me as well as a co-worker. But then I see his work with the coaching staff and we have a variety of ages on our coaching staff. I would say we have active older adults as coaches as well as as well as college students. And so he's leading by example and showing what it is to be a positive role model, not only to his team, but then also the kids on the team. And then just to see that growth and to see those children specifically the ones we call our nationals national swimming team. They're the ones who are older, sophomores, juniors, seniors in high school. To see them now becoming role models as well to younger. Aggression. It is, it's an incredible progression and I get to know them very well. A lot of them lifeguard on our team as well. How they balance school, work, life. It's really incredible what they're doing at a young age. But they are an amazing, amazing group that are accomplishing not only a lot in the water, but a lot outside of the water and makes makes me proud to have them part of our Dynamo Swim Team and our Y. And something I know that's very important to you personally, but it reflects the broader view of the Y is to make sure all of this is accessible and one of those ways is financial accessibility. Whether it's enrolling in a lifeguard class, participating on the Dynamo Swim Team or taking a swim lesson. We have conversations with people every day, every week, at least, about providing financial assistance to make sure that happens because no one should miss an opportunity to learn how to swim or otherwise participate in any of these things we've talked about because of a financial barrier. Absolutely. Let's look at the new building now. We've got a video that we'll queue up and we'll have run in just a moment here. But this is an animation, one of two that our architects have prepared of the new building. People are seeing the building under construction at 298 College Street. Just 150 steps up from our current building. They see the exterior, but the inside, we can't get people in there yet. That's coming soon, January 1st opening, but these videos will give folks an idea. So right here on this one, you see we're going to enter from College Street into our lobby. You already see the windows and the light that fill the space from the lobby. There's an opportunity for parents to look in and see their kids who may be engaged in the pool if they're not in there with them. We'll come back around to the pool decks in just a moment, but you'll see with the fireplace, the couches, we really want to connect people and have them connect with one another, that community type space, warm, inviting. Going past here are a member service desk where folks would check in each time they come into the Y. We're going to head down the hall and take a look at what we think is a great feature. It's our member drop in childcare. So if someone comes to get a workout in and they have a kid and might make it challenging otherwise to get their exercise in, they can bring their child, drop them here if they're a member, get in their run on the elliptical or the treadmill, take a group exercise class. Heading down now through one of our three locker rooms that we'll talk more about, this is our universal locker room. And you'll see there's six individual suites where a family can go in or someone who doesn't identify male or female can use these for privacy if they so choose the access here out to the deck of the pool. You'll see a sauna there, that wood is a sauna. We'll talk about that. Two pools, the lap pool on the right with the lane lines. We have a program pool we keep warmer, splash pad for kids. So we'll talk about all that in detail and probably run that video again before we conclude the program, but it's very exciting. The light is an incredible feature, but let's just walk through it. So first of all, the locker rooms. All of them access directly onto the pool deck, right? And so tell us about the locker rooms that we have and how that's going to work. Absolutely. It's going to be amazing because right now in our current facility, there are a great deal of stairs. So you'll be able to walk directly into the YMCA. You'll be able to go right into the locker rooms and then you saw a ramp into the pool area. So there are no stairs that we are going to have to utilize to get into the pool area. Or a back entrance. This really gets to me every time I think about it, but because of the limitations in our current building, if someone wants to access our pools, we have a back door in the parking lot that they have to then come down an interior ramp. And that's not the welcoming environment wants. So this is great that folks can come right in and go through the locker rooms. And we'll have three locker rooms, right? Yeah, that's really important to me. I think that having that universal locker room is a huge addition to our current facility. Just to allow families to be able to stay together, navigating if you've got an infant and a toddler and toddlers on the move. Traditionally, you would have to take them into one locker room, one adult. So now the entire family will be able to stay together. In addition to people who might not want to go into a traditionally gendered locker room, really, our universal locker room is for everybody. So there's some private changing areas. There's also some areas where if you come, some parents bring their kids in there some suits from home already. So they can just take their clothes off, throw them in a locker, head right into the pool, and you don't even need to use a traditional locker room. So once through those locker rooms and you enter the pool deck, try to point out quickly the wood paneled area, a sauna right there on the pool deck, right? Absolutely. And this is a huge safety feature. The sauna has windows, the pools will be life-guarded. So the sauna will be part of that lifeguard rotation. We will be able to see people who are in the sauna, keep an eye on them to make sure that they're safe inside the sauna. Very, very exciting. There will be some age restrictions which clearly can't have young children in the sauna, but it's just going to be really nice to be able to have that more monitored by trained professionals. And the fact that the sauna will be open to anyone who has a membership other than the age restrictions will have in place, but your membership at the Y comes with use of the sauna. So it's there for you. Absolutely. Now we talked about age restrictions for the sauna, but we've got a great feature for kids and families for the first time we're going to be offering a splash pad, right? Absolutely. It's been incredible that our splash pad features have actually gone up in the past week. So if you walk by the building you can see them there through the windows. This is a great area with no standing water. It's just an area for children to explore, get used to the water, have fun. Some children are ready literally to dive right into the pool. Other children, it takes a little bit more time. So this is going to be an area where children can sit, stand, walk around, have water kind of poured onto their heads. There's some seashell features where kids can play with their hands and water just to go a little bit slower and not have to get right into the water. Additionally, if you're a parent with multiple age children, it's going to be a feature that your younger children can enjoy while older children are in the pool. So it just adds, lastly, if you have older children who are participating in Dynamo Swim Team and or Swim Lessons and you've got that little one on the pool deck, it's always, always bothered me parents trying to wrangle an 18-month old on the pool deck while they're older siblings. All they want to do is swim. Now they can have fun. And we should share for people, because this is fun and we like this, is Champ is honored, if you will, on our splash pad with one of those water features is a champ-like figure. So that's a lot of fun. Very exciting. So from the splash pad then, let's talk about, we have two pools. As we do now, we have two pools. We have what we refer to as our program pool. One of the key features to that is the warmth. We're going to keep that 86-88 degrees in that range. The plan is a very similar temperature, the same that we have now. So that's going to be great for our younger swimmers but also our active older adults. So continue to offer an arthritis exercise class. We do have some water walkers, some lap swimmers who do enjoy because of their joints, the warmer water. So that's going to continue to be the use of that pool as well as the family time pool. It's more comfortable as a family to have just some free swim in that pool. Now how about access? How people get into this pool and how's that differ from what we currently have? Yeah, absolutely. There's going to be some great wide stairs that are permanently in that pool. So they're not removable overhanging stairs. Exactly. They're going to be much more safe, much more secure. It'll decrease clutter on our pool deck and it'll just feel better to walk in. It'll feel more stable to walk in. In addition to that though, I do want to mention that both pools do have an accessible lift. So for people who still can't do stairs or not comfortable doing them, we do have accessible lifts where you can sit in what feels kind of like a swing and then be lowered into the water. So they are still completely accessible and those lifts are permanently in place. So they'll be much easier to manage than that current lift that we have. And a little bit different is that sometimes there are folks who use our program pool because it's warmer and they want that to try to swim some laps but in a more informal way. There's actually a section of this program pool that is lain. It won't always be used in this way but lained, if you will, so people could swim there, right? Absolutely. It's shorter. How long is that? Yeah, the program pool is only about 15 yards or so, so it's a little bit shorter than our traditional lap pool but it's still, we have the ability to put lap lanes in and we will have periods throughout the day where we have that. The whole length of the pool is a bit longer but those lanes are about 15 yards. Correct. And then we have our second pool, our lap pool, kept at a cooler temperature because for the most part people are in there, they're swimming for exercise so they're working up a sweat, if you will, in the water. So that's around 81 degrees. Exactly, yep. Is the target and tell us a little bit about the setup of that lap pool. Absolutely. So we're very excited, some new features that differ from our current lap pool situation. That's going to be our deeper pool and so we've got a depth of about eight feet on that pool and what that provides is a proper starting diving depth for our swim team. Right now our swim team kids as well as our masters, our adult swim team program, they cannot dive off of a starting block and swim a legal length of the pool to prepare for swim meets and competitions. So in our lap pool we'll have four starting blocks on each lane. Our swimmers will be able to dive in and swim legal lengths, legal strokes, which will be really exciting because it'll better prepare them for competitions and other pools but we're also seeing more digital meets now so it's hopefully long term going to provide the opportunity for us to sort of have a home swim meet even though we won't be competing against other swimmers in our pool. Some of the meets can be have time submitted now which is exciting. I'm not aware of that. That sounds like fun. It is fun. So and the lap pool like the program pool will be accessible with the lift chair right so if someone needs to get in, wants to get in that way they can. A couple of other things are getting into the nitty gritty of this. The filtration, how does the filtration system differ from what we currently have? Right this is where I get into a big pool geek conversation. I'm very excited. We have what we call UV filtration in this pool. It's ultraviolet filtration so what that does is run the water through an actual light and that's cleaning the water for us and what that provides not only less space in our chemical maintenance area but also it provides us to have a lower level of chlorine in the pool which just feels better on our skin for our bodies so we'll still have some chlorine in the pool to make sure we maintain a good clean atmosphere but it will be less chlorine than we've traditionally had. Lowering the chlorine level the amount that we need to maintain the pool as you said helps everyone with their skin but there are some people for whom too high a chlorine really becomes more than just it's not just a preference to be in but it can really be a reaction so to lower that is really great. Exactly and then the drainage system for these pools is different from our old traditional pools as well. Absolutely I would say for those who are familiar with our pools it looks a lot like our lap pool however it's called curtain drainage systems and what it is is it just makes for a smooth surface and so that way you're not going to have an uneven surface as you walk towards the pool it'll just be one kind of flat surface that slopes slightly down into the drains but you won't have to deal with an uneven a tripping hazard and it's just a very efficient system and is it more of the drainage is taking place there as far as circulating the water so there isn't suction at the bottom of the pool exactly you know sort of a safer way to about to circulate the water absolutely it's just it's amazing when you talk about our current pools the program pool specifically being as old as it is and as loved as it is these pools the the technology is just outstanding and it's been it's been great to work with the team who's installed them and see we really have newest of the new. So water is just going into the program pool this week in preparation for our opening on January 1st so that's exciting but as you and I were talking it's the opportunity to continue to do what we've done these years but in a facility that really better meets the needs of the community the light filled space the reliability at this point with a 1934 pool one of our pools the other from the mid 80s reliability has become an issue for us so we hope that will be out of the equation they'll be reliable they'll be accessible it's very exciting and and really one of the more significant changes I think is the improvements for families and the opportunities for families to come together and use the pool not just a parent or a guardian who may want to come for a swim for exercise but bring everybody get in on a splash pad and of course the traditional swim lessons so why don't we perhaps close or work work towards our closing by showing the video again the animation and the animation again starts us out on College Street and you'll see there's a parking lot on the right little hard to see it's not lined in this animation but we'll have about 47 parking spots for the first time our Y will have parking which is exciting again this inviting lobby space that we want people to use to connect with one another to be more comfortable if they're waiting for kids who are involved in Y programs a great view into the fund that's going to be taking place in the pool the warmth literal and figurative of a fireplace we'll have a community conference room there that the Y staff will use but we're going to find ways to extend that opportunity to community members to use the conference room as well check in and there's another entrance you'll see we just passed on the right in from the parking lot the locker rooms all on our left down near that gentleman sitting there is the entrance to the men's and the women's locker rooms but here a peek into our drop-in child care leave your child with our staff while you get a great workout in go back down through the universal locker room with those six individual suites we'll move quickly here but pause for a moment at one of them the look in great opportunity to have family and others use this the universal locker room all of the locker rooms like this one exit directly onto the pool deck with access with a ramp so there's no issues for anyone who's got mobility problems the lap pool the splash pad the champ pool champ there you see is rearing his head and some water coming out there so uh jess if you've worked at the Y now for at our Y for about eight years nine and a half nine and a half years what does this mean to you to be entering into a new Y absolutely um it's exciting it's fun first and foremost we we are so excited I am so excited um as a Y child myself growing up in the YMCA um we have many children who say well this is my Y this is my Y and truly this is their Y this is our Y and so it's exciting to be be here for the start of something which is just going to build on the foundation we are in our community already um and in addition I I'm so excited to have a facility that's going to better meet the needs of our community not only from an accessibility standpoint um but also from a well-being to um swim in the basement to work out in the basement to be a lifeguard for three plus hours where you don't have natural light um facility you're talking about exactly it is it is difficult and so this facility is going to provide our users just such a more pleasurable experience to have natural light to have new equipment to have pools that are are going to be in a much more stable place than our current ones um it's just going to be a really beautiful welcoming facility which makes me very excited for the well-being of our staff our team and then the members that use it it's just going to be um a welcomed litter breath of fresh air so we welcome everyone to join our new YMCA that's what we're about we are about community and we want folks to join us we're opening our doors on January 1st but before that time you can see this video uh one that's made up uh takes you through our fitness area you can get information about other features and membership rates which by the way we're lowering our membership rates as we go into a new building may seem counterintuitive but we want the building to be accessible financially as well so we're lowering our rates uh all of this is available on our website you can go to gbymca.org slash new ymca again that's gbymca.org slash new ymca get all this information about the new y see if it's a place where you want to be with us we hope it is because it's uh we're stronger uh we're better and uh when we're more inclusive and have everyone in our community as part of our ymca so we hope to see you come January take a look at our website and thank you for joining us for Y Connection we'll be back next month with our CEO Kyle Dodson which will be shortly before we open the doors so thank you very much