By CLARKE STACKHOUSE/ Staff Writer

NORTH SHELBY – Learning any new skill can be difficult, but Greystone YMCA offers summer swim lessons for people of all ages to make learning to swim a little easier.

Swim instructor Becky Heisner said in her 30 years of teaching she has never gotten sick of seeing the kids and adults she teaches understand how to swim.

“It’s so much fun to see the light go and they have it,” Heisner said. “It’s a great personal victory.”

She said swim lessons are a fun, safe way to learn a skill that can be life-saving.

“You’ll survive if you don’t know how to play soccer and football,” Heisner said. “Swimming is an invaluable, potentially life saving skill to learn.”

Heisner said many of her lessons are kids, but ‘anyone and everyone can learn how to swim.’

“I teach from pediatrics to geriatrics,” she said. “But, the younger the better when people are learning how to swim.”

She said many adults she teaches have a fear of the water from past experiences where they may have been thrown into a body of water without knowing how to swim, and never wanted to get back in.

She said her oldest student was 86 and scared to even get water on her face, but was able to become comfortable in the water.

Heisner said because of the time she has spent teaching she has started with the oldest child in a family and taught through the youngest. She said she’s seen kids who were terrified in the beginning receive swim scholarships for college.

“Kids are amazing,” she said. “On Monday they’ll look like they’re drowning and on Tuesday be the first one to jump in the deep end.”

Sisters Anna Claire and Caroline Henry are taking swim lessons this summer from Heisner and both said they enjoy just getting in the pool and going underwater.

Anna Claire said she has taken swim in the past and got to learn some more advanced steps this year.

“I learned how to go diving and love the moment your head goes into the water first,” she said.

Caroline said she enjoyed learning how to use the kickboard and improve her kicking technique.

Heisner said she loves seeing the kids take to the water and lose any fear they may have once had.

She said she sees too many kids and adults come to swim parties and not get in the water and sit off to the side and wants to encourage everyone to learn to swim.

“It’s just a great feeling to see them really love the water,” Heisner said.