Maggie Cattell believes everyone who wants a chance to swim should have easy access to a pool.
The Plant City Family YMCA brought Cattell aboard in August as its aquatics director to breathe new life into its swimming programs, and the Fort Wayne, Indiana, native is committed to getting as much use out of the pool as possible.
“I don’t want anybody to not have a place to go,” Cattell says. “But it’s a balancing act — you have to pay attention to the programs that are already here, you have to pay homage to the lap swimmers that we have and the people who like the option of open pool space.”
With plenty of experience under her belt, Cattell is ready to serve the Plant City community however she can.
DIVING IN
Cattell was born and raised in Indiana, and is a lifelong swimmer. She grew up swimming at her local YMCA, which helped her as she transitioned into more competitive programs. After completing her undergrad studies at Indiana University in 2012, studying psychology and sociology, Cattell moved to Florida and got back in the pool.
“I really jumped on the opportunity to come to a different swimming environment,” Cattell says.
She’s worked at Florida Southern College, was an aquatic leader in the City of Tampa Parks and Recreation Department and, most recently, a recreation supervisor for the City of Pinellas Park.
Cattell chose to come to the Plant City Y believing it would be a good fit for her, as new Executive Director Zach Hilferding has been eager to boost the Y’s swimming programs from the start. She has plenty of work to do on that front but is eager to meet a few specific goals.
SWIMMING LAPS
One of the three goals atop Cattell’s list is to be a good employer and to give the Y’s aquatic staff a strong foundation to build on, whether they want to stay at the Y or eventually leave.
Another is to establish a stronger presence within the Plant City community, and it’s something she’s already seen progress with.
She’s helped bring both Plant City High and Strawbery Crest High’s swimming programs to the pool, where they now hold regular meets and practices. Cattell hopes to add Durant High to the mix by next year, giving all local high school swimmers a place to go that’s closer than Lakeland or Brandon.
Cattell is also hoping to give the Y’s programs a stronger presence in local schools.
“Water awareness is not just coming to a pool,” Cattell says. “As a staple in the community, we need to go to schools and talk to preschoolers and kindergarteners, talking about what water safety is.”
Beyond that, she says that adult swim lessons appear to be something the Y will need to offer in the near future.
“I’ve only been here a few weeks, but the parents I’ve talked to at lessons, the main reason they put their kids in lessons is because the parents don’t know how to swim,” Cattell says. “Having adult lessons is something that I think is extremely important.”
Her third goal is to re-establish the Y’s swim team, which has been a hot topic since Hilferding and other new Y staffers have come aboard.
That one, Cattell says, will take some time: she first wants to make sure she can balance schedules well enough to make room for a year-round YMCA swim team and then wait until after the winter months’ slow season to make sure enough kids are willing to sign up.
The program, which Cattell envisions as a “feeder program” for middle and high school teams, will also help high school swimmers who do not belong to club teams in the FHSAA offseason. It should mostly benefit kids above age 12 in the YMCA’s soon-to-be reworked youth swim lessons program, which currently caps out at that age and leaves those kids with the option of either paying for private lessons or finding a friend’s pool.
“Once they reach age 12, what do we do with them,” Cattell says. “We don’t have any programming for them. It gives them something to do.”
Contact Justin Kline at jkline@plantcityobserver.com.