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The Frankfurt swimming school cannot offer as many courses as there are inquiries. Due to the closure of the swimming pools, many children are unsettled in the water.
Move your legs in a relaxed way, Heike Füllbeck calls out to the children on her seahorse course. Holding the pool noodle in front of them with both hands and with armbands on their arms, the four- to six-year-olds move through the pool in the Dahlmann School in Bornheim. “We could actually work around the clock, that’s how long the waiting lists for the courses are,” says Füllbeck. The intensive courses during the summer holidays at the Frankfurt swimming school, where the 46-year-old is employed on a fee basis, are almost completely booked out.
The need for swimming courses was great even before Corona. Now he’s gigantic. However, it is not so easy to make up for the month-long deficit, especially since further water bodies have disappeared when the Rebstockbad was closed. And the pandemic has left its mark. “Many children have gone backwards”, reports Füllbeck after almost nine months without the opportunity to go to the swimming pool. In dolphin courses, the follow-up courses for the seahorse, many children would not even have made a run at the beginning.
Do not put any pressure on the children when they return to the water
“We sometimes had children with us who cried out of fear and insecurity.” That is very depressing. With these children in particular, it is about being empathetic and not stressing them. “We will then work with the status that you are at. If you don’t put any pressure on them, safety comes back, ”explains Füllbeck. It will be practiced until the children can manage a track.
The series
Corona has not only shaken the lives of countless people, but also almost all areas of our coexistence and shaken it up.
Now that the number of infections is falling and the number of people vaccinated is increasing, it is becoming increasingly clear what the new normal actually means.
To a large extent, there will be no going back to life before Corona. The changes and the experiences we had to make with this pandemic are too far-reaching for that.
But what remains? What’s coming? What do we want to keep and where do we have to turn the wheel back again?
We tried to get a picture of how reality and all of our lives are changing, so we spoke to many people who gave us their professional views or conveyed their very personal assessments.
Today’s episode is about how the crisis changed sport and what that means for some people. The overview of the series can be found at fr.de/corona-hessen–
Füllbeck gives up to 20 courses per week. During the pandemic, she did not get any financial support from the state because she is married. “I was banned from working and I knew exactly that people were just waiting to register their children with us,” says the swimming instructor, who also trains the triathletes of SG Frankfurt.
The club’s sports director, Michael Ulmer, is busy organizing the course bookings every day. There are around 170 courses with around 1500 participants this summer. The Frankfurt Swimming School (SSF) has ten permanent employees, three trainees, eight freelance workers and 25 trainers. “Our teachers are all vaccinated or take a test before the courses,” says Ulmer.
The corona risk in the water is low: “The chlorine kills everything”
You can only go to the swimming pool with a face mask. In practice, care is taken to ensure that the distance is maintained. “In the water, however, the risk is low. The chlorine kills everything, ”emphasizes Ulmer. The sports director of the corona pandemic cannot say anything positive about swimming. He would prefer to be able to return to the state before March 2020 immediately. Plus more water areas.
After all, this summer Ulmer can offer the intensive courses in the teaching pools of the Dahlmann School, the Marie Curie School and the Wöhlerschule, because they are now under the care of the Frankfurt swimming pool company (BBF). This week it will also be clarified whether the indoor pools will also open, then additional courses would be possible.
The swimming school wants to keep the damage as low as possible.
This is also sorely needed, says Ulmer, “because according to current studies, 50 percent of twelve-year-olds cannot swim safely, that is, they cannot swim for 15 minutes at a time”. Now it is a matter of keeping the damage as low as possible and catching up on what can be made up in the summer holidays.
In any case, swimming instructor Heike Füllbeck is happy “that we can finally get started”. And especially the children in their courses.
More about sport is available in a guest post by the chairman of the state sports youth as well as in a portrait of the founder of Crossfit-FFM
Swimming instructor Heike Füllbeck leads around 20 courses.
© Peter Jülich
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