The first SCS D & I Camp was in November of 2015. It was a success. A lot of swimmers in attendance and they all had a good experience.
We just held our second D & I Swim Camp this past weekend and it was again a success with 56 athletes in attendance along with 3 athletes as participants and speakers who attended the Zone D & I Camp.
The Swim Camp seemed to be very successful with the staff of Tracy Maurer, Tiffany Quash, and Virgil Chancy. The kids were able to take some things away from the camp, and also had a lot of fun with their experience.
The Camp began Friday Night with our speaker, Jessica Hardy. Her message was great as she reinforced perseverance, hard work, and positivity. She described how her experience included a time where she could not keep up with her group, but her determination to be able to keep up pushed her to do great things. Her story and talk had so many messages that the campers and parents were able to take a lot away from her speaking.
I hosted and presented at our first D & I Summit. This was just some short talks about...
What is Diversity and Inclusion? What role does it play in swimming and for athletes and parents for underrepresented populations? What are the goals of SCS Diversity and Inclusion? How we hope to move forward with Diversity and Inclusion efforts? Recruiting volunteers to help with some of the efforts that we would like to make with Diversity and Inclusion.
The Summit was not large, but I was able to get some of the message out to a few. This will become one of the biggest efforts for our D & I Committee moving forward. Education on what D & I is and why it is so important.
One question was how does this help a swimmer who already is accepting of diversity and sees diversity on their swim team already? This is actually the kind of swimmer we are looking for. Swimmers with this mindset can become an ambassador of growing acceptance more than a person that we just first get to be more accepting. If we get these swimmers mixed in with swimmers of different cultures, sexual orientation, or religions, then they help promote the idea that our sport is accepting. The athletes we can create as ambassadors and the coaches we get to become leaders of being accepting to everyone the better off our sport will be. Diversity and Inclusion is just the title we use to promote and develop this accepting environment in our sport.
