Story and Photos By: Luke Peritore ’28
Fourteen seventh and eighth graders chose the Winter Term class Rams Can Swim, taught by Coach Khannie Dastgah, Middle School PE Teacher & Director of Aquatics, and Ms. Callie Bambenek, Middle School Science Teacher. Jack Bryan ’28 says, “In this class, we practice many needed skills for new swimmers, like most people in this class are.” This class is important to Coach Khannie because “swimming is a life skill, and our students will be around water at some point in time, so we want them to have water awareness, safety, and confidence.” In this class, students will learn important swimming skills like freestyle stroke and treading water, they will also learn some fun things like diving. Preston Clemens ’28 had a goal to “learn and get better at swimming so that in summer I can swim without help.”
In Rams Can Swim class, students start by doing some basic stretches led by Coach Khannie to get warmed up. After the stretches, students learn or fine-tune basic skills like freestyle or treading water. Then, they get some free time to learn to dive or do flips on the diving board; they also can use the water log. The water log is a barrel-like log in the water with two supporters on each side and one person on top of the water log. Once that person is standing, they have to walk forward and the water log will rotate, kind of like running on a barrel. The object is to walk or run on the log as long as you can without falling off.
Ms. Bambenek is assisting Coach Khannie in the Rams Can Swim class. Ms. Bambenek says she is teaching this class because “I swam competitively in high school growing up and being able to work with Coach Khannie and watch these seventh and eighth graders do swimming is just a great way to connect with other students.”
It is amazing that these teachers can do a swimming class in the winter term because, well, it’s winter. The credit is due to our amazing Steward Family Aquatic Center, which allows students to practice swimming all year round so that they can confidently swim in the summer!
Sivaram Chadalawada ’28, a beginning swimmer, has improved thanks to this class. He said, “I am very confident now.” It’s clear that Rams Can Swim was successful.
