After Tragedy Genie Lutz' Lifelong Mission To Prevent Youth Drowning Was Born
Now she's asking the community to help build a new YMCA so she and her colleagues can teach more kids to swim
When Genie Lutz was young her family suffered a great tragedy – and every parent’s worst nightmare.
“When I was a teenager my youngest cousin drowned at a family homestead in a river,” she said. “I made a commitment to myself at that time that I didn’t want anyone else to suffer that same level of tragedy.”
So she got certified to teach swim lessons. She taught them in high school, through college and now, decades later, she’s teaching kids how to swim at the Wenatchee Valley YMCA.
Teaching children even the bare minimum skillset, or how to be “water safe,” saves lives in a region like North Central Washington where there is so much unsupervised open water, she said.
“There’s the river, there’s the irrigation canal, there’s loads of lakes. There are way too many places that are unmanned,” she said. “And people simply need to know how to swim to get out of the water and help themselves.”
You can watch a short clip of Lutz talking about that here:
But Lutz and others at the YMCA say their ability to teach every kid who wants lessons is seriously hampered by the small pool they have to work with.
The current Wenatchee Valley YMCA building is more than 120 years old and the pool in the basement is just 13 yards long. At maximum capacity they can only have 18 children in the pool at the same time, she said. This is to serve a two-county community that according to Chelan Douglas Trends had an estimated combined population of 126,000 as of 2023. That’s an increase of 76.4% since 1984.
A 13-yard pool hasn’t cut it for a long time, and that’s why they need a new facility with a new larger pool, say Lutz and her boss, Wenatchee Valley YMCA CEO Dorry Foster. It’s one of the many reasons Foster has been in full-time fundraising mode trying to close the gap and make a new facility at the corner of Fifth Street and Wenatchee Avenue a reality.
The plan, which you can learn more about here, is to have a aquatics area with three distinct zones. That will allow for three different types of Y member to use the pool at the same time, Foster said.
The total estimated cost of the project is about $25 million and the goal is to raise $15 million of that from the community. The rest will come from a combination of government funding, private partnerships and the sale the current building, according to a PDF on the Y’s website here.
To date $13,713,865 of that $15 million goal has been raised, and things are moving forward with the acquisition of the property for the future site. But the goal hasn’t been met yet, and Foster says no donation is too small.
You can learn more about the project and pledge your support here.
And you can see part II of Lutz’ remarks about the need for a new YMCA aquatic center and what she enjoys about teaching kids to swim here:
My Two Cents
Obviously I support this campaign personally. I’ve also worked on it personally. My company produced the two videos embedded above and I have spoken with and interviewed members of local Y, as well as staff members, to understand and communicate the need for a new facility.
I’ve also been a member of the Wenatchee Valley YMCA since I moved to town as a single man after college. Now my wife and I have a family membership that I admittedly don’t use enough, but my kids have taken swim lessons in that little pool. I’ve sat on the small metal bleachers in that basement and watched three separate swim lessons taking place in that tiny pool myself.
So I am lucky to get to work on a professional project that I am also so personally passionate about. That’s why I decided to spotlight this campaign after we edited and released Genie’s interview. It’s a powerful “origin story” and one that I think highlights very well the biggest reason we need to teach our kids to swim.
And sure, folks can take their kids elsewhere for lessons. They don’t have to go to the Y. But the YMCA is affordable and it’s for everyone. No one is turned away because of an inability to pay. They will work to meet people where they are to ensure they have access to a Y facility. That’s huge in my book. I like paying dues to an organization that works to lower barriers anyone might have to pursing a healthier lifestyle through regular exercise.
The YMCA’s mission is a noble one, but the building is old. It has served well for more than a century, but it’s time for a new facility to serve our community for the next hundred years.
I’m supporting this campaign for a lot of reasons. But a big one is because I want to take my kids to that new pool and be able to tell them I had a small part to play in making it a reality.
Thanks Dominick ! Good information about the new building , fundraising and how the sale of the present building will help with the cost of the new facility . . . :)
Genie is the best instructor ever! We will rearrange our calendar to get into a class if we know she will be teaching!