A teenager who's spent years swimming laps in a calm backyard pool can still get caught off guard the first time they're actually swimming in the ocean. No walls, no clear bottom, waves pushing in directions a pool never does, and often a current doing something a pool swimmer has never had to account for.
Most Miami-area drowning incidents involving teens and young adults at the beach come back to rip currents. Not a lack of swimming ability, but not knowing what a rip current looks like or how to get out of one. The advice is simple but counterintuitive: swim parallel to shore, not straight back toward it, until out of the current.
For teens heading into more open-water swimming, lessons shift toward sighting (swimming without a wall to follow), handling small chop, and recognizing rip current patterns from the shore. It's a different skill set than pool swimming, even for a strong swimmer.
Heading to the beach more this year? Let's build the skills that actually apply there.
See Teen Program