- April 26, 2024
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After teaching swimming to Ormond Beach kids for 21 years, Kathy Appell opened an aquatics school, off Hand Avenue.
BY WAYNE GRANT | STAFF WRITER
The business park at the corner of Hand Avenue and the railroad tracks has one occupant that’s a little different.
Approaching the warehouse, instead of tools grinding or machinery humming, you hear children laughing, splashing and yelling. Inside, a swimming pool is alive with instructors teaching kids water-survival skills, as well as improving their swimming strokes.
Ormond Beach native Kathy Appell, after teaching infant aquatics in town for 21 years, is currently finishing the first summer of running her own business, Aqua Journeys Swim School, at 400 Parque Drive. She opened in March.
Children as young as six months are taught how to roll over and float for aquatic survival in the above-ground pool. Older children are taught stroke techniques.
Holding swim classes indoors, Appell says, allows her to keep classes going during summer thunderstorms — and even into the winter. She said hers the only indoor pool used for swimming lessons in Ormond Beach.
“We open the doors when the weather is nice,” she said, motioning toward large garage-style doors on each side of the shop.
After swimming competitively as a youth at Ormond Middle School and Father Lopez High School, Appell went into the medical-supply business. She changed course, though, after having two children.
“I took them to have swimming lessons because I wanted them to be safe,” she said. “When I saw infant aquatics it became a mission. I saw what a baby can do. They can swim before they can walk.”
Before going solo with Aqua Journeys, she gave lessons at local health clubs and YMCA facilities for 21 years.
Brooke Gaboury, an Ormond Beach mom, said she has a pool at home and took her baby to Aqua Journeys because she was concerned about safety.
“My child loves the pool and she’s not afraid of the water,” Gaboury said. “This has been great. It’s a lively atmosphere.”
Even though the pool is indoors, there is no chlorine odor — and that, Appell says, is because the pool is cleaned with an ultraviolet-light filtration system, and just a bit of chlorine.
With five coaches currently on staff, Appell is hoping her new businss flourishes in the winter, when she plans to teach babies to swim in the morning and older children after school.
In the meantime, she's been keeping busy making presentations on water safety at local private schools. She said she hopes to add public schools throughout the county to her schedule in the future, as well.
Katy Steinberg, another client, says having a swimming school in Ormond Beach that's open in the winter time is helpful.
“If a child was born in February, you’d miss a whole year because you wouldn’t be able to have lessons until the following summer,” she said.
Steinberg had her child learn to swim at the age of 8 months, she added.
“There’s so much water where we live, even retention ponds,” she said. “There are just so many stories of kids drowning.”
Even if a parent doesn't have a pool of their own, she said, there is still danger if they visit a friend with a pool.
“You might think someone else is watching the kids,” she said.
Call 676-9555.
