Nearly 60 percent of Hispanic and African-American children cannot swim, almost twice the figure for White children, according to a first-of-its-kind survey that USA Swimming hopes will strengthen its efforts to lower minority drowning rates and draw more minority children into the sport.
USA Swimming is teaming with local governments, corporations, youth and ethnic organizations to expand learn-to-swim programs across the United States. One of the key participants is Black freestyle star Cullen Jones, who hopes to boost his role-model status by winning a medal this summer at the Beijing Olympics.
USA Swimming’s motives are twofold, executive director Chuck Wielgus said.
“It’s just the right thing to do making an effort so every kid can be water-safe,” he said. “And quite frankly it’s about performance. We’re something of a niche sport and for us to remain relevant, considering the changing demographics of the population, it’s important we get more kids involved at the mouth of the pipeline.”
Black children drown at a rate almost three times the overall rate. And less than 2 percent of USA Swimming’s nearly 252,000 members who swim competitively year-round are Black.
As part of the initiative, USA Swimming commissioned an ambitious study recently completed by five experts at the University of Memphis’ Department of Health and Sports Sciences. They surveyed 1,772 children aged six to 16 in six cities two-thirds of them Black or Hispanic to gauge what factors contributed most to the minority swimming gap.
