Portsmouth Couple Opens Swim School in Bristol

BRISTOL, RI—- A Portsmouth couple has opened a unique swim school in Bristol, specifically designed to provide swimming lessons for young children starting at 4-months-old.

Ripples Swim School, owned and operated by John and Beth Heelan, is modeled after some children’s swim schools in California and offers a specialized swim lesson experience for families.

The Heelan’s developed the idea for Ripples after briefly living in Orange County, CA, where they found themselves looking for swim lessons for their own three children and discovered several small swim schools operating out of customized facilities catering to young families. When they moved back to Rhode Island in 2012, they saw an untapped market.

“Most swim lessons in this area are done in large, multi-purpose pools,” Beth, a native of Bristol who manages day-to-day operations at Ripples, said. “Most of the facilities are designed to run various swim programs- each with different needs. No one was catering to the specific needs that kids and families have when learning to swim. We felt the smaller, specialized environment we experienced in California was a much better experience for our family, so that’s what we set out to replicate.”

The Heelans developed a business plan and began shopping for an ideal location for their new facility, eventually landing on Gooding Avenue in Bristol. Gooding Avenue, which runs between Hope Street and Route 136, has evolved into something of a recreational sports mecca. The street boasts a gymnastics facility, baseball camp, personal trainers, various gyms, a kick boxing school and now, Ripples.

The Heelans took over two smaller locations and combined them into Ripples. Over the course of eight months, they put in a 20- by 40-foot in-ground saltwater pool, family friendly changing rooms, a large-windows viewing lounge open to the pool deck and a sibling play area. The 90 degree pool is only three-and-a-half to four-and-a-half feet deep and features platforms to help smaller children learn how to swim.

“We focused on building the ideal facility for children’s swim lessons,” Beth said. “The smaller, cushioned pool is much less intimidating for new swimmers and there’s no deep end so the entire pool can be utilized for lessons. We use a state of the art, salt water purification system to reduce the use of chemicals while both the air and water temperature are kept at a warm 90 degrees, year round, so kids stay warm and comfortable.”

Beth holds a Political Science degree from the University of Rhode Island and previously worked in the finance industry. John has a degree in Economics from Clark University and a sales and marketing background. Together, they did extensive market research, met with potential franchises and studied the competitive landscape to determine if this type of facility could be successful on the East Coast.

The biggest challenge they faced was trying to convert the model used in Southern California into one that would work in Rhode Island. The market areas are very different and a customized swim facility designed exclusively for children’s swim lessons was a new concept for this area. It took two years but they finally developed plan they believed would flourish in an area like the East Bay.

So far, the plan is working better than they expected.

“Within three months of being open, we were far surpassing all of our projections for student count, revenue, and other growth metrics,” Beth said. “As a result, we’ve had to increase our staff, expand our hours of operation, and increase our class and activity offering to accommodate the demand.”

Ripples uses an evolved swim curriculum geared towards children which helps make the learning process fun and effective. It offers lessons in four categories: Tots (4 months - 2 years), Junior Swim School (3-6 years) and Senior Swim School (7 and up), and Stroke School for more advanced skills for all ages.

Each swim program is separated into five stages, represented by the colors White, Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green. These color stages are used to divide students into broad ability groups with each of stage having its own unique lesson plan focused on developing a specific set of swimming skills. There is a “Swim Skill Benchmark” for each stage that each child must accomplish before moving up to the next stage.

All of the Ripples instructors are certified in Swim Instruction, First Aid, CPR, and Lifesaving.

Ripples is open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. It offers group, semi-private and private lessons. Ripples also offers adult swim lessons, open family swim, wateraerobics, and pool party rentals.

For more information visit www.ripplesswim.com