MINNEAPOLIS — It was a beautiful day outside but still worth swimming inside before taking a dip in a lake this summer. "As a person who likes to lap swim, I like to be able to see and feel safe in a pool," swimmer Katie Wilson told WCCO at Phillips Aquatic Center. Wilson said she was a competitive swimmer as a student but mostly gave up the sport because it had gotten too expensive.
"Most lap pools are going to be located in schools, so you can't as an adult just go in the middle of the day," she said. "The other access points are large gyms which could be a couple hundred dollars." Minnesota, of course, has roughly 10,000 options for swimming in the summer season, but lakes are bigger and deeper than pools, and that also makes them more dangerous.
There's new research from the CDC, moreover, that reveals a startling rise in the number of drownings across America since the pandemic. "I've seen firsthand the effects of drowning: families forced to say goodbye to their loved ones too soon," said Debra Houry the CDC's Chief Medical Officer. "CDC's drowning prevention experts collected high-quality drowning data to better understand how we can protect people in communities across the United States.
Understanding the barriers people face to accessing basic swimming and water safety skills training can help us better understand how to address those barriers, decrease drowning rates, and save lives." The research from the CDC included the following data: In Minneapolis, the Park .