SKWIM lands in Redmond Pool

Don’t scratch your head in bewilderment the next time you visit Redmond Pool and see a large group of swimmers tossing bright foam disks around a pool.

They’re just enjoying the sport of SKWIM, invented by Kevin McCarthy, creator of the Redmond-based SKWIM International.

The game’s concept grew out of a need for a water sport that people of all ages and skill levels could play and enjoy together.

“In the water we have the equivalent of basically track and field, which is competitive swimming, and water polo, which is like football,” said SKWIM marketing director DJ Weidner. “There’s a lot in between that.”

SKWIM is played in two 20-minute halves with two teams in a pool called a “lagoon,” marked off by boundaries in three sections — two red sections called offensive and defensive “bays” as well as a middle section called a mid-bay. The object is to get the disk, designed to skim across the water, into your opponent’s circular goal trap by strategically passing it between teammates. One point is earned for a goal scored from a team’s own offensive bay, two points from the mid-bay and SKWIMmers that are skilled, or lucky, enough to score from across the pool will earn three points for their team.

“At first when people hear about it, they go ‘what is this game?’ but the minute we get people in the water and playing, they’re like, ‘this makes sense, this is fun,’ Weidner said. “Their initial reaction is one of curiosity, but after that it’s one of excitement.”

The organization also offers SKWIM lessons for kids, taking all the ordinary techniques taught in regular lessons and teaching them in a game-oriented platform, which makes coming to the pool more fun and appealing for youngsters.

“We teach them the crawlstrokes, breaststrokes, backstrokes, but we do it in the context of the game,” Weidner said. “Our hope is that we can do SKWIM lessons here... and that by fall we can start actually transitioning from a lesson platform to a “team” platform, where we will actually have SKWIM teams and youth development programs.”

Although the sport has only been in existence for a little more than a year, Weidner said he believes that the community reception the organization has received has been very positive, and Weidner hopes that the sport will continue to spread locally and nationally.

“Over the last year we’ve been working with community pools, lifeguards, swim instructors, we have talked to the YMCA nationally, we’ve talked to the American Swim Coaches Association,” Weidner recalled. “We’ve basically been getting the word out that we have this cool sport. Through those partnerships and through that conversation, we started to design the programming and the game in a way that’s really inclusive.”

More than anything, Weidner hopes that SKWIM will help those that aren’t as comfortable in the water become competent swimmers in the pool.

“One of the missions of the organization is to promote water safety and water confidence through the game of SKWIM,” Weidner said.

He also stressed that safety is a top priority in the program, noting that it is a requirement for each SKWIM contest’s three referees to be lifeguard-certified, and that he enforces that all traditional water safety rules apply whenever his guests are in the water.

From a marketing standpoint, however, Weidner has lofty goals for where the sport of SKWIM will be in the next decade or so.

“We can dream big. Our hope is that, especially with the Olympics coming up, is that we can get into conversation with the U.S. Olympic Committee, within the next five, 10, 15 years, and hopefully it will become accepted as a great way for people to have fun, work out, stay physically fit, become water-safe and water competent,” Weidner said. “We want to spread this throughout the United States in the next five years, and in the next 10, get a significant saturation internationally.

Weidner was happy to announce that he just had a school in Hong Kong contact SKWIM, and that he will likely be working with them in the fall to develop a SKWIM program for high school students in Hong Kong.

“(SKWIM) has caught on and it’s growing,” he said.

SKWIM MASTERMIND

Just about everything involved with SKWIM has been through the hands of Kevin McCarthy, a Sammamish resident who grew up in southern California near the water. As a product developer for big-name sporting goods manufacturers like Nike and Speedo for the past 30 years and former competitive swimmer, he says coming up with the idea has been a lifelong endeavor for him ever since he fell in love with surfing, and wearing a certain accessory that is a large part of SKWIM.

“I liked how wearing fins made you fast and efficient in the water,” McCarthy said. “I thought there should be a water sport that encompassed the use of swim fins not only to get around fast but to help those who weren’t strong swimmers feel more confident in the water.”

He has a company in Los Angeles making the official SKWIM fins for the game, but what about the colorful foam “skip-disks?”

“The disk design is about 10 years old,” said McCarthy, father of five. “It took a while to get the design right, but it slides on the water pretty efficiently. The whole goal is to have an implement other than a big ball, something that little kids, people with special needs ... or senior citizens can play with, something that’s fast and exciting on the water like a frisbee.”

McCarthy, who was the co-designer of the “Croc” line of beach sandals, reiterated the fact that SKWIM’s ultimate goal is to help build confident swimmers by bringing people to the water more regularly so that both children and adults are less likely to panic when faced with a dangerous situation in the water.

He also brought up a frightening statistic: every day an average of nine people in America drown, and another 30-40 require hospitalization for a water-related incident.

“That means that 40-50 people every day have a traumatic encounter with the water, and many of those people are rarely in the water,” McCarthy said. “If we can have a sport that is open to more people than say, competitive swimming or water polo, it is our hope that it serves the community.”

For more information on SKWIM, visit www.skwiminternational.org or call (425) 869-6505. To find out when SKWIM is offered at the Redmond Pool, contact manager Melissa Stepp at mstepp@nwcenter.org

Tim Watanabe can be reached at twatanabe@reporternewspapers.com or by calling (425) 867-0353 ext. 5054.

Contact Redmond Reporter Sports Reporter Tim Watanabe at twatanabe@redmond-reporter.com or (425) 867-0353, ext. 5054.

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