Edel graduates from learner to swimming instructor

THE community of Flagmount is well used to the sounds of Lough Graney’s lapping waters but over the summer, the lake becomes a hive of activity with sounds of children splashing about and swimming instructors giving lessons.
Swimming lessons at Flagmount form part of a 40-year tradition whereby the lake is taken over five days a week from the final week of July to the first week of August.
Those from the age of four get their first taste of the wild water, while those up to the age of 18 perfect their swimming techniques and take on further challenges such as life saving.
For one local, however, swimming at Lough Graney has brought her full circle.  Having learned to swim at these swimming classes from an early age and returning each year after, Edel Broderick returns to the lake this year as an instructor.
It is the first time a local who has attended and achieved all the necessary swimming and lifesaving courses year on year at Lough Graney will have reached instructor level and returned to teach at the popular lake lessons.
The Leaving Cert student  from Caher remembers being brought to the water for lessons for the first time by her mother and recalls never being apprehensive about it.
“I liked it from day one and I probably did to keep at it. I’ve always swam here in the summer. We all come down here together and we have great fun down here. I did all the classes up along every summer, there’s the swims, safeties and rescues and that goes up to rescue four and then there was a course on how to become an instructor and you can take it when you’re finished. I wanted to be able to teach here once I had finished so I went on to do that,” she said. 
Asked what the draw to the lake is and why she prefers Lough Graney as a swimming spot, Edel believes “it’s a natural thing”.
“I’d rather it than a pool. I think you become a better swimmer from the lake too,” she explained.
Edel is currently an assistant instructor but will sit her final tests to become a fully fledged swimming instructor this week. She is currently assisting Lorraine Treacy from Whitegate, who has been heading up the classes in Lough Graney for the past seven years.
Together, the two have five classes each with a total of 40 participants coming each year. Edel explains that the smaller ones are introduced to the water at the shallow side of the pool. Here, they are really introduced to the water through games and after a week, they are ready to use floats and begin working on swimming techniques.
Meanwhile, the older groups are involved in safeties, rescues, lifesaving and swimming techniques.
“They would have to know the simple rescues like throwing the ring buoy and then there’s the rescue swim. They would have to swim out to a subject and they would have to swim to a certain distance and as you go up in the levels, the distance goes up as well. They swim out in their clothes and rescue them and they have to carry them back to a certain point. It is a bit challenging. The clothes get really heavy. We also do CPR classes,” she continued.
Edel has advised that anyone who lives around the lake and hasn’t attended the classes before or who would like to pick them up again to come down as the rescue and CPR techniques are extremely worthwhile skills to have in a lakeside village.
The classes in Flagmount started in the early 1970s but in recent years, the community found increasingly difficult to get instructors and to keep the swimming lessons going. The community are delighted to have Edel and others coming up through the lessons to earn instructor status and look forward to being self sufficient into the future.
Clare Water Safety will be out at Lough Graney this Friday to adjudicate on the swimming tests and following this there will be a party for the participants who will be awarded their swimming certificates.