By Courtney Hong
Staff Writer
The pool at Pepperdine takes on a more light-hearted and laughter-filled atmosphere than usual on Friday mornings. From 9 to 10 a.m., student athletes aren’t the only familiar faces in the pool, but so are those of the young, the middle-aged and the elderly.
In partnership with the Esperance Center, a Malibu non-profit residential and day organization for the disabled, program visionary Simon Jenkins and a group of dedicated student athletes are making noble use of their time to extend helping hearts and hands to the center’s clients via friendship and aquatic exercise.
Known as the CHAMPS aspect of fulfilling athletic requirements, this new program, based on one that exists in the NCAA as well as Eastern Oregon University, where Jenkins worked before coming to Pepperdine, seeks to give student athletes a way to obtain valuable life skills.
The planning began last May, when Jenkins approached the Esperance Center to propose a special swimming program for its clients, who have different degrees of developmental disabilities that range from autism to cerebral palsy to mild retardation.
Shannon Gosch, program coordinator at the center, saw the potential benefits of aquatic exercise for the clients and readily agreed.
With the help of several student athletes, including Gina Warren and sophomore Janna Lineback, Jenkins organized a thorough program whose future seems to be certain thus far.
“Hopefully it will be a strong program at Pepperdine,” said Lineback.
Several students are placed with a single client while in the pool, ensuring the well-being of the client during exercise. In addition, extra safety measures are taken in the form of flotation devices that are provided, as well as both student and professional lifeguards being on duty during the hour that the clients are in the pool.
Many of the athletes who are physical education majors are able to gain real-life experience as they enable clients to find freedom of movement in the water that they may not necessarily have while out of the water.
Even more so than the practical benefits, however, there are the social ones, which allow bonds to be forged on both ends as clients and students get to interact with people they may not otherwise have the opportunity to have.
“This program attracts the best students,” said Jenkins.
Gosch added, “I can’t tell you how impressed I am with their attitude toward the clients.”
The athlete participant standpoint complements the observations of Jenkins and Gosch.
“It truly is the highlight of my week to come out here,” said Scott Harvey, senior, who hopes to go into medicine in the future.
For Linko Hebert, current Pepperdine graduate student and Esperance Center employee, the program has had a more direct link to her future. Obtaining a job at the center after finishing her undergraduate studies in clinical psychology and sociology, Hebert sees firsthand how Pepperdine’s Christian principles are being integrated.
The program “really helps one to see people for who they are as people,” Hebert said.
October 30, 2003