This is part of a series highlighting recent ACE participants who are finding meaningful ways to connect and build on their ACE experience beyond their three-week ACE summer program. After student-athlete participants complete their ACE summer, they are encouraged to think about a specific goal that connects their ACE experience to their life in a meaningful way. ACE staff support this process through the development of a personal ACE Action Plan and 1-1 coaching, group meetings, and check-ins throughout the year.
After participating in the ACE in Costa Rica program in 2024, Austin Simpson focused his Action Plan on developing and improving a project he and his swimming & diving teammates previously worked on, Swimming with the Blue Devils (SWTBD), a free water safety clinic for children in the Durham community to learn important and potentially life-saving swimming skills.
Austin shares, “I became the Swimming with the Blue Devils co-director last year after I really enjoyed participating in it as an instructor during my freshman year. I knew that I would enjoy a logistics role in the program, and that resulted in my desire to help expand our reach over the Durham area. Although this program was not new nor my original creation, I am extremely happy to engage with the community and hopefully provide a large enough outreach that all families in the area that were in need of swim lessons could receive them.”
Swimming with the Blue Devils has been a program that has been in place with the Duke Swimming & Diving Team for many years, several of which Austin has helped with. In reflecting on his Action Plan and how his role with SWTBD changed after ACE he says, “I had chosen to lead SWTBD before going to ACE, and we had already led one session in 2024. However, we only were able to host one event that academic year. While hosting that event and having numerous parents come up to me and ask ‘when will the next event be’ and having to explain that we were unfortunately unable to offer any more sessions that year was difficult. Spending part of my summer in Costa Rica reinforced this notion of how important little things like swim lessons can be. Andrey, one of our hosts in Costa Rica, mentioned that even just the sight of collegiate athletes sparked an ambition in the children of the Gandoca area. Providing swim lessons to children in Durham could lead to the same results. Whether the swim lessons provide an ambition for swimming or just an increased interest in college/athletics, the program would be a huge success (in addition to teaching children, who might not otherwise have access to teaching, how to swim.)
“ACE definitely reinforced the necessity for giving back. What can seem like something so minuscule to you can be a life-changing experience for someone else. It is all about providing that life-changing experience to others.”
As the semester progressed, so has Austin’s Action Plan. He shares, “It holds the same values overall: Increase awareness and access to swim lessons in the Durham community. The ways that this has taken shape, however, have changed a little bit. Our old method of using a community partner to help spread the word to the community did not pull in as many participants as we had hoped. I searched for alternatives. This included local elementary schools and parent Facebook groups to boost our outreach and increase the number of signups for each session. It has been a huge success so far!”
After returning to campus and working to improve and expand on SWTBD, Austin faced challenges. “It was a little hard to get enough participants at first. However, after advertising our event in the right places, we have seen a huge increase in the number of people attending. Unfortunately, this outreach has been so successful that we are unable to accommodate all those who signed up. This has led to us implementing a waitlist model for overflow participants. This structure gives me a few mixed feelings. On one hand, I am excited that we have reached so many people who are in need of lessons in the area. On the other hand, I wish that we had the capacity to provide lessons for all these people. Due to scheduling and volunteer availability of the swim team, we can’t offer more events than we are currently offering (roughly 1 event per month). In the future, I would hope to offer more events to allow for everyone who wants a lesson to be able to receive one.”
The most recent Swimming with the Blue Devils clinic served 40 children from the Durham community.