One of the most valuable life skills anyone – of ANY age – can possess is to swim, and mastering such an ability is especially important for a Long Island resident…after all, we ARE on an island, are we not?
That being said, there is one school that is making a serious splash in Long Island’s swim scene that has the ability to give you the finely-honed and versatile swimming skills that you need, whether you’re negotiating the waves at the beach, overseeing the welfare of others as a lifeguard, or just spending an afternoon relaxing in your backyard pool – urSwim.
Currently with locations in Farmingdale, Huntington, Port Jefferson (opening Nov. 3!) and Connecticut – and also possessing the ability to come to you for lessons at your home or swimming facility – urSwim (pronounced “Your Swim”) is a year-round school that provides both swimming lessons and lifeguard training, as well as professional lifeguard staffing services, pool/aquatics management, and American Red Cross courses, ensuring that whatever your need is, urSwim can fill it.
Marina Mentzel is the founder and CEO of urSwim, and her company’s stated and magnanimous mission is to “teach 1,000,000 people to swim.” Originally founded in 2013, urSwim is headquartered in Patchogue and currently serves Nassau, Suffolk, and Fairfield County in Connecticut, and is currently expanding through franchising and partnering with facilities across the region, with the end goal being to eventually go nationwide.
Mentzel herself has a strong background in aquatics for many years in her youth, but initially she envisioned an entirely different – and much dryer – career path for herself prior to urSwim.
“Funny enough, I had been a swim instructor and competitive swimmer pretty much my entire childhood and young adulthood,” she said. “However, I had every intention of being an attorney. I went to law school; I passed the New York and North Carolina Bar, and then quickly decided that entrepreneurship was really my life's passion, and I wanted to quickly pivot. So, I went back to what I knew.”
“I had always had a real passion for teaching and educating in the water,” Mentzel continued. “I really believe that confidence in the water builds confidence in life. So, for me, it was, how can I take this business model with what I've also learned through my education in law school and really create something that's scalable?”
Mentzel would go on to found urSwim, and then spent the next decade-plus curating the business model, re-tweaking it, and pivoting when necessary. They endured, as all businesses did, through COVID, at which time she formally launched into franchising, with plans to take urSwim nationwide to spread her goal of advocating water safety while becoming part of the communities that they serve.
“I'm truly passionate about water safety, the needs of the community, and working with our clients,” she said “And I noticed that there was just such a need and a void in the market – both here on Long Island and across the country – and I wanted to go ahead and enter the space to be able to provide that not only to my local community, but ultimately communities nationwide further on.”
urSwim’s age range spans nine months to seniors, and when it comes to safeguarding the health and well-being of the most venerable members of society – our youngest children – it’s never too early to start training in order to avoid the direst of consequences.
“Drowning is the leading cause of death for children under the age of four. So, obviously, we wanted to hyper-focus our programming on that category,” Mentzel noted. “But we also serve adults, preteens, and those children that never quite took to it in the younger years of their life. So, what we kind of landed on was an all-inclusive, all-ages swim program.”
urSwim’s class categories are vast and diverse, catering to individuals who never learned to swim and who may be terrified of the water; adults who want to have enough skills to feel comfortable on their vacation; new parents that are in the water for the first time with their babies; those that have been in the program for years who are now looking to go beyond an instructional program and compete, and everyone in-between, all while keeping things fun and inclusive. Indeed, urSwim does it all.
Of course, any swim school is only as good as the staff teaching the classes, and urSwim aces that category as well. Their instructors are highly-trained and most have been with the company for at least two to three years; all are at minimum CPR-certified, with most also lifeguard-certified by a nationally-certified body, such as the American Red Cross.
urSwim also offers accessible pricing for their courses; they can opt for a monthly subscription which will give them access to four lessons per month, in addition to session-based packaging, where households commit to a specific number of lessons that can be shared amongst any members of the whole family. Trial lessons are also available for anyone who is on the fence, giving them the opportunity to – literally – dip their toe in the water before committing.
Ultimately, urSwim represents not only the ability for Mentzel to create a successful, home-grown national franchise from the ground up, but to accomplish that while doing something that she truly and passionately loves, all while helping to provide vital skills that actually save lives in the process.
“I've spent the last 10 years really doing something that not only I love, but also getting to interact every day with our wonderful clients; our parents, the children, our commercial clients, and the country clubs and the summer day camps that we work with. It's truly such a privilege to be able to do what I do and gain the trust of those that we work with.”
To find out more about urSwim, please call 631-209-7665 or visit https://urswim.com.