
DATE: Sunday, November 2, 1997              TAG: 9711010239

SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER      PAGE: 06   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: COVER STORY 

SOURCE: BY LEWIS KRAUSKOPF, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  111 lines

EVERYBODY INTO THE POOL MORE SPECIAL-ED STUDENTS THAN EVER ARE DIPPING INTO THE CHESAPEAKE SCHOOLS SWIMMING PROGRAM.

KRIS O'NEILL'S final swimming lesson at the Portsmouth YMCA pool begins like the others.

Dry.

His mom dares him and his teachers plead with him, but the 15-year-old won't budge from his spot along the wall. There, he watches the next-door aerobics class, safely away from drips and splashes.

``No water,'' Kris says again and again.

For Kris and three other special-education students, the swimming class early last month would be their last for the year, in an adaptive physical education program that has been growing over the last few years.

Fourteen schools are now involved with the program, including about 140 children.

The four children who swam in Portsmouth were from Chittum Elementary and Western Branch Middle School. They would have had to trek to the Greenbrier YMCA for swimming, but the Portsmouth Y provided its pool free, as a community service.

And for the children, the generosity certainly made, well, a splash.

Next to a lane where two women swim the crawl, a roped-off area at the shallow end of the pool is filled with multicolored balls of many sizes, flotation devices - and the excited cries of children.

Tre' D. Lewis doggie-paddles, an inner tube snugly circling his tiny body. Grasping onto a yellow floating ``noodle,'' Tre' blows bubbles in the air in time to Aquatic Director Jo Ann Rawls' singing of ``The Hokey Pokey.''

``You put your left foot in, you take your left foot out. . . ''

``Booboobooboo. . . ''

Although she had only four sessions with the Chesapeake children, Rawls has seen the children become more at ease with the water.

``If you could have seen them then and seen them now,'' she says. ``It's like a freedom for them.''

Kris, meanwhile, has inched toward the edge of the pool. It's close enough for him to toss the plastic balls into a circle formed by a floating noodle like he's playing basketball, his favorite sport.

But he still stands safely away from the water.

``Oh, it takes time,'' says Kris' mother, LuAnne, vowing to get her son into the water by day's end.

Special-education students in the Chesapeake Schools are anywhere from 2 to 21, and their disabilities range from hearing impairment to autism or mental retardation.

Equally varying are their swimming abilities. Some swim on their own during the sessions, practicing crawl or breast-stroke. Students with more serious disabilities mostly play in the water and need constant supervision.

At the Portsmouth pool, swim instructors and special-education teachers outnumber the children about three-to-one.

LeAnne Hancock leaps up and down in the water, holding hands with her teacher, Iris Green, and assistant aquatic director J.J. Rodman.

LeAnne douses herself in more water as she lifts herself higher, making it difficult to imagine she once shied from the pool.

``When she first started, she was very reluctant,'' Green said. ``She has more personality in the water.''

LeAnne's change doesn't surprise Kathleen Tomlin, one of the school system's two adaptive physical-education teachers. Swimming loosens up many disabled students who are normally reticent, said Tomlin, who watched the children from the edge of the pool, having forgotten her bathing suit.

``Kids that normally don't respond to things . . . respond in water,'' Tomlin said.

Swimming and other adaptive P.E. courses often help integrate special-education students into the mainstream.

``Just because these children are in special education, it doesn't mean they don't socialize with other kids,'' said Jan Garner, director of special education for Chesapeake Public Schools.

This session of swimming and socializing is winding down. LeAnne and Tre' are each huddled in towels. Antoine Sykes has been helped back into his wheelchair.

But at the shallowest end of the pool, Kris has been coaxed to the edge. With his mom and teachers around him, he sits on the edge, dipping his feet.

Then, suddenly, he slips in. Kris is submerged from chest down.

``Mommy! Mommy!''

``Want to get out?''

``Yes. Mommy!''

Kris wades across to the ladder, where he helps himself out and grabs a towel.

``He slid in himself,'' a surprised LuAnne O'Neill says. ``I didn't believe it. . . . He did more today.''

Who knows, next year Kris might be the first one in the pool. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos including color cover by CHARLIE MEADS

Antoine Sykes, who normally uses a wheelchair, gets a kick out of

his pool session with J.J. Rodman, assistant aquatic instructor at

the Portsmouth YMCA.

Tre' Lewis doggie-paddles in the Portsmouth YMCA swimming pool, an