The statistics might be spooky, but CAST is saving lives!
Fall is our busiest time at CAST. Thank you to all our families who are prioritizing their child’s swim safety at CAST’s pool in Forest Park, IL this fall!
A Letter From Liz…
Dear CAST Friends and Supporters,
Fall is here yet again, and I want to tell you a little story about Octobers at CAST.
In October of 2017, while on a family trip to Home Depot, my 2 year old daughter Scotty picked pumpkins for herself and her baby sister. Then, she picked another, for “Ms. Therace”, a visitor she was going to meet for the first time that night. It was her idea. A simple moment that became very sentimental over time.
My ISR self-rescue new instructor training was about to begin and with that we would be hosting 2 traveling Mentor Instructors (complete strangers) in our home for 3 weeks each. I would then spend well over 300 hours participating in academic and in-water self-rescue instructor training as well as business building efforts.
At first, my dream of empowering kids and saving lives by becoming an instructor barely held a candle to the doubt and guilt that consumed me. I doubted that I had what it took to teach babies and toddlers to swim and float, it was nearly impossible to find pool space, and there was initial resistance of families to sign up for lessons. The guilt was an even bigger beast. I beat myself up that we got our pumpkins at Home Depot instead of the pumpkin patch. I missed the school parties. I felt like I only saw the kids when they came to lessons at the pool (which Abby screamed throughout).
I was ready to abandon ship. I told myself that all we had to do was get through 6 weeks of instructor training before the strangers would be gone and I could discard my ridiculous plans and go back to regular life as a teacher and mom. Thankfully, somewhere along the way, the doubt, the strangers, the screaming and the mountains of wet towels became a distant memory. Kids were floating, parents were talking about it, and the visitors became our dear friends. Together we found stolen moments between lessons and academics, diapers and bedtime stories, to sip coffee together and dream about what could be for self-rescue lessons in Chicago.
Soon, we envisioned a non-profit, where more kids could benefit from lessons, more families could be educated, and more instructors could become trained as business owners and change makers. As you know, we called it the CAST Water Safety Foundation.
We are now on our 10th consecutive fall season of hosting mentor instructor visitors.
Most years, we support the training of new self-rescue instructors.
It was fall of 2020 when we opened the CAST Facility here in Forest Park, IL and my dear friend and co-captain Anna Biggins and I (a duo of former teachers) led our team and swim families and learned how to run an operating business in the height of a pandemic.
In 2024 we partnered with instructors from CO, AZ, AL, CA and MO, and researchers and friends from AL and TN to fund, facilitate and host a first of its kind research study on the water competency capabilities of toddlers. (In fact, this summer, while sharing drinks with a donor who supported our research study, I received a text with news of a child who had fallen into the lake and used her skills to find her float and call for help. That child was a research study participant in the fall of 2024.) What we do in the fall is what allows kids time to become safer before spring break and summer arrive.
We teach swim lessons year round but October is where it all started. Every fall is a little different but it’s always busy, and the pool is always full of kids learning to swim, float and save their own lives.
On our 10th fall season, we are celebrating having one brand new instructor mentor visitor to town, and another who is on her 8th visit. We are hosting the training of 2 new instructors who will serve the Chicagoland area. CAST instructor team lead Ashley Condron and I held down the fort all by ourselves this summer but we are now are joined by instructors from Arizona, Tennessee and Indiana to deliver over 300 lessons each week.
Some years our family makes it to the pumpkin patch, and others we get pumpkins at Target. Regardless of where the pumpkins come from, ever since 2018, when I would take out fall decor, my kids excitedly ask not if, but when our instructor visitors (now dear friends) were coming back. Our family and our team does not know a fall season that is not marked by instructors visitors. They are not only experts in their field, making a huge difference in kids’ lives, but they have also become family.
Last but not least, I cannot forget all of you. If you are here and reading, you are part of the difference we make. Whether you have generously supported our scholarship fund, ensuring that we never need to turn a family away due to the cost of lessons, brought your child for new or continuing lessons during the fall season, allowed me to bring our CAST visitors to a gathering at your home or brought coffee or baked cookies for an instructor who is traveling away from home, we are grateful for your part in this story.
Whenever I reflect on our impact at CAST, the kids empowered and the fact that every summer we receive news of kids that found their floats when it truly mattered, the underlying thought remains that “so many people believed, so many helped, especially during the fall.”
So Far this Fall…
On September 11th, we remembered the 25 year anniversary of 9/11 while partaking in a full-team CPR and First Aid Training. Thank you to our host, Alvin Hargrove of Life Safety 365, for providing informative and even entertaining life-saving content.
On September 19th the CAST team joined our partners at the River Forest Fire Department for their annual neighborhood safety fair.
Upcoming Events!
October 17th – Collab for Kids Early Childhood Resource Fair
10:00am-12:00pm at Oak Park Public Library
October 24th – Forest Park Casket Races
9:30am-12:30pm & Trick or Treat on Madison at 12:30pm
October 29th – Trick or Treat at CAST
10:30am-2:00pm & 3:30-7:00pm
October 30th – Trick or Treat at CAST & Complimentary Coffee Cart
7:00-10:00am
Growing the ISR Team!
We are proud to host many new instructors CAST this fall. Please join us in welcoming:
- Stephanie Clemson of Chesterton, IN who is joining us to provide weekly maintenance lessons to over 20 children this fall.
- Adarae Rempel of Riverside, IL and Caitlin Stutzman of Pingree Grove IL, who began their new ISR instructor training at CAST on September 28th.
- Lisa King, a 40 year ISR Senior Master Instructor from Nashville, TN who is co-training Adarae and Caitlin with our longtime friend and ISR Master Instructor, Therace Pollard of Chandler, AZ. Welcome back Therace!