Swimming the sound to benefit youth aquatics team

Balmy weather and calm water brought 72 swimmers out to Banks Channel in Wrightsville Beach Saturday morning for the Swim the Sound to benefit the YMCA’s Cape Fear Aquatics Club.

About 30 of the swimmers were last minute entrants, race organizer Gavin Spake said, inspired to participate by the ideal weather forecast.

“It’s great out here,” Spake said, and top female finisher Kate Pottle agreed, adding that it was nice to swim with the current.

The swimmers jumped into the water at the island’s south end at 8 a.m. and swam 2,000 meters north, finishing at the Blockade Runner Beach Resort, where friends and family gathered on the docks to cheer them in.

Fifteen-year-old Pottle’s final time was 30:33, which was good enough for fourth place overall. Matthew Wisthoff was the top male finisher in 28:10.

Spake also serves as head coach of the Cape Fear Aquatics Club. He was proud of Pottle, a high school freshman on the team, saying she has been working hard in practice and improving. Seven or eight of Pottle’s teammates also took part in the event.

Proceeds will help the team attend meets, he said.

“We go to a lot more meets than we used to,” he noted, saying the money will go towards lodging, food and car rentals.

The Cape Fear Aquatics Club holds weekly practices at the YMCA’s indoor pool, so team members log countless hours of traditional lap swimming. But Spake recently started incorporating outdoor practices into their weekly training regime.

Every Saturday, they run about three miles from Wrightsville Beach Park to the island’s north end, where they do ocean swimming and exercise on the beach. If the tide is low, they’ll play Ultimate Frisbee.

“We just try to utilize what we have around us,” Spake said, “and it’s a lot of fun for them.”

Team parents have been very supportive, Spake said, because he focuses on teaching water safety skills—awareness of boats, understanding of how to swim through waves and knowledge of rip currents.

“The parents are like, ‘Get them out there in the water, we live down here so they need to know how to be out there,’” he said.

In addition to the YMCA participants, swimmers from Raleigh, Durham and Charlotte also took part in the race. But Spake said he’s excited to see so much local participation, which included members of Cape Fear Aquatics Club Masters Swim, Wilmington triathlon clubs and casual swimming groups.

“The swimming community is growing,” he said. “As a swim coach it’s good to see that, it gets you excited for the future.”