Photos by Ryan Howard
Griffin leads seniors citizens in a water exercise class on Jan. 22.
At 2:15 in the afternoon on Jan. 22, 20 senior citizens splashed into the pool at Southwest Junior High in Forest Lake. They joked with their friends and chatted about recent events, but their eyes faced forward, and their arms and legs imitated the motions of a 61-year-old woman with silver hair and a jaunty gait.
In one of her last classes before retirement, Sue Griffin still brimmed with energy, a smile on her face and encouragement on her lips as she marched up and down the east edge of the pool, leading the seniors in their water exercises as a cover of “Take A Chance On Me” warbled from a nearby boom box.
The longtime aquatics supervisor for Forest Lake Area Schools is calling it quits after 22 years on Jan. 30, but she still loves her job.
“I wanted to leave on a good note,” she said.
When she was 12, Griffin learned to swim during lessons in White Bear Lake. From then on, she’s loved the water.
“From the time I was a little girl, I’ve wanted to be a swimming teacher,” she said. “I never thought that this could be a career.”
Sue Griffin, Forest Lake Area Schools aquatics supervisor, managed the non-athletic swimming programs for the district, all of which took place at the Southwest Junior High pool in Forest Lake.
Before coming to Forest Lake, Griffin, who lives in Lino Lakes, worked for several years in community education at the North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale School District. When the opportunity to focus more on swimming came up, she jumped at the chance to become a Ranger. Her passion for aquatics, sunny disposition and mantra that “everybody needs to learn how to swim” made her a perfect fit.
“I do a lot of private swimming lessons for students who are having trouble, and I seem to be able to reach those kids,” Griffin said. “I can teach just about anybody how to swim.”
From 1992 until today, if there’s an event going on at Southwest’s 25-yard, eight-lane pool, Griffin has known about it. The district’s second aquatics supervisor since the pool was built in the early 1980s, Griffin was responsible for much of the expansion of the district’s aquatics program to what it is today – both for the traditional K-12 swimming programs and for community education.
“I get people coming from all over the place who want to take our swimming lessons,” she said.
The pool is bustling from morning to night. Each morning before school begins, about 20 people swim laps. Then, various middle school classes visit the pool throughout the school day. Swimming is a part of the physical education curriculum for every middle school student in the district. Griffin said the district has made it a priority that all District 831 students learn how to swim, both for lifelong safety and for a fun physical activity they can take part in for their entire lives. Just look at her senior citizen swimming group, which at various times has been attended by multiple students in their 90s.
“You don’t hurt your joints when you’re exercising in water,” she pointed out.
After school, the high school boys and girls swim and dive teams and the synchronized swimming team often use the pool for practice and for smaller meets. Though Griffin was hopeful for a pair of new pools during the 2014 school bond facilities referendum discussion, she’s protective of the Southwest pool, explaining that it worked fine for competitions that didn’t feature a lot of competitors.
When high school and middle school students are not in the water, including on weekends, the public can use the pool for community education swimming lessons or events. Griffin scheduled and oversaw all of these events, including parent-child lessons, preschool lessons, senior exercises, lifeguard lessons, “swimnastics,” pool rentals and more. Many of the programs exist because of her commitment to expand the pool’s offerings, a commitment she said was fostered by a district that was happy to give her freedom to shape the program.
“I’ve been really, really lucky,” she said.
And, of course, she teaches a few of the classes herself. Fostering a love of the water is one of the most treasured parts of Griffin’s job. The best moments, she said, are the times when she sees a student who was once afraid to dip his head underwater learn to love swimming and splashing around the pool.
“That is the biggest high you can have,” she said with a grin.
After 22 years, Griffin said, it was time to hang up the flippers. Her husband has already retired, and she wants to spend more time with him and do some traveling. She hasn’t ruled out teaching a lesson or two in the future, but she’s confident she’s leaving the aquatics program in a prosperous place. As the face of the aquatics program, she’s spent more than two decades filling the ranks with hand-picked swim teachers and administrators – some of whom she first met when they were teenagers in the district’s various swimming programs.
“It’s in good hands,” she said.