May 27, 2020

It’s not as easy to find a pool this summer — but the one inside SafeSplash Swim School is back open, with an added focus on keeping kids safe as they potentially venture into other waters this season.

The business at 85th Street and Minnesota Avenue is franchised by Dan and Christa Sobocinski and marked its one-year anniversary in January.

SafeSplash hit its enrollment peak around 750 swimmers a week in March, just as the Sobocinskis decided to close the facility in the middle of the month because of coronavirus safety concerns.

A few weeks ago, SafeSplash opened for family swimming time, where one family could access the pool per session. On May 16, the Sobocinskis went back to offering lessons, providing private sessions with one instructor and one student and semiprivate lessons with one instructor and two students.

Olympian Cammile Adams visited SafeSplash in February for a workshop with staff and a swim clinic for students.

Dan Sobocinski said the adjustment to smaller lessons has been relatively easy for SafeSplash because its approach to swim lessons has always been small class sizes in highly controlled settings. However,  the business has added more safety precautions such as requiring employees to answer a series of health questions and take their temperature before each shift as well as wearing masks in the lobby and face shields in the pool.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that chlorine can kill the coronavirus. Sobocinski said he’s optimistic that the measures they’ve put in place throughout the facility will prevent any spread within SafeSplash’s walls.

“It’s what’s going on in our lobby and what’s going on above the water that we have to be concerned with,” he said. “So we’re putting in place the measures that help us address that, and I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that. Our customers seem to be excited to get back and so far have been very receptive to the changes that we’re asking of them.”

With the recent announcement that public pools in Sioux Falls will remain closed for the summer, he said water safety becomes even more important as kids turn to lakes, backyard pools and other unsupervised water environments for fun.

“We can close down all of the pools and take all the safety precautions we can about the current health concerns that are going on — that are understandable — but it doesn’t mean that kids aren’t still going to find their way into water, and where we can do it responsibly and safely, we need to still continue teaching kids to learn to swim,” he said.

Although it can’t accommodate as many swimmers as usual, SafeSplash remains committed to providing the basis for the many safe, fun, family memories that happen in the water, Sobocinski said.

“You just think about the activities, the vacations, the memories, the traditions — all the things that go along with having a really fun (time) growing up, some of which is about being in and around the water,” he said. “Providing an ability for kids to participate, providing an ability for parents to feel safe with their kids participating (in swimming) and have a different mind-set that they don’t have to be on constant alert once those kids know how to swim, promoting the benefits of these things, I think helps us motivate parents to teach their children how to swim.”