The St. Cloud Parks and Recreation’s aquatics staff coordinated St. Cloud’s participation in The World’s Largest Swimming Lesson June 14 at the Chris Lyle Aquatic Center.

This is St. Cloud’s second year participating in the attempt to break the Guinness World Record. Last year, the Guinness World Record was broken with more than 20,000 swimming lesson participants. Children and adults worldwide came together to be a part of the largest simultaneous swimming lesson ever conducted and send the message that swimming lessons save lives.

“Our main purpose is to teach beginners how to be safer in and around the water, to teach and refresh skills that make everyone safer, and combat drowning,” said Aquatics Supervisor Beth Walters. “To be included in the record-breaking attempt, we will submit the required material right away. Last year, we had 27 participants, which was a good number for our first year. But this year, we had 119 participants; we more than quadrupled our attendance and that is wonderful. This was a fun yet important event because learning to swim is so valuable and we need to stay focused on water safety year-round.”

The lesson plan for the more than 500 facilities participating this year included safety, entry, breathing/submerging, floating, and strokes. Locally, infants to adults took part in the effort to break the record. The official participant counts will be released soon after the final counts. For details, visit www.worldslargestswimminglesson.org.  For more information on St. Cloud’s water safety programs, call 407-957-7243.

Pool hours adjusted Saturday

St. Cloud pool hours adjusted to host swim meet June 23

The St. Cloud Parks and Recreation aquatics team announced that there would be an adjustment to the open swim hours at the Chris Lyle Aquatic Center (3001 17th St.) Saturday.

Regular Saturday hours are noon to 5 p.m., but Saturday it will be 2 to 7 p.m.

“We will be hosting the St. Cloud Aquatics Team, or SCAT, swim meet for a 2012 USA Swimming/Florida Swimming AG/SR/TF Invite meet at our pool,” said Aquatics Supervisor Beth Walters. “SCAT has invited seven central Florida teams and is expecting about 350 people to be present. The public is welcome to come and watch the meet, which starts at 9 a.m. and will continue until almost 2 p.m. The pool will reopen to the public soon after cleanup at 2 p.m.”

For details on any Parks and Recreation activity, project, program, or rental facility, visit the Parks and Recreation web page at www.stcloud.org, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , or call 407-957-7243.