Friendships made in a Louisiana summer share a singular nature. They’re built to withstand sweat. They’re soaked in the smell of sunblock and chlorine, born from time off of school and a common goal to escape the sticky heat. And for many, like Jan Ripple and Christie Myers, those friendships start in the pool.
In the summer of 1969, Christie Myers was riding her bicycle to the Tara subdivision’s community pool when her neighbor, Jan Ripple, invited her inside for a mustard sandwich. The two 13-year-olds biked to the pool together, and so began a lifelong bond—and two careers in swimming.
Now a retired triathlete, Ripple co-founded Crawfish Aquatics 15 years ago with her husband, Dr. Steven Ripple, and it has grown into a Baton Rouge institution with an estimated 3,700 students from across the community in its summer programs alone, plus hundreds more in year-round competitive swim team groups. With her best friend Myers on deck each summer teaching lessons, those 3,700 young swimmers may feel a bit more inspired to find their own poolside friendships.
“Swimming is just a wonderful, wonderful sport,” Ripple says. “I’ve been involved with swimming most of my life, and it builds families and friendships that we have all over the country in every state.”
In their early teens, the pair began visiting schools for blind and deaf children with Ripple’s mother and gained their first experience with instructing children in the pool. Ripple and Myers began taking their own students in the Ripple family’s backyard pool soon after, a job they would carry on as they competed together on swimming and diving teams throughout high school and college.
After college, Myers taught swim lessons in her parents’ pool for more than a decade while Ripple pursued a professional triathlon career. Though Myers and Ripple stayed in touch, they wouldn’t teach together again until 2004. After building a second pool at Crawfish, Ripple needed backup, and she knew just the woman for the job.
“I said, What would it take for me to get you back out here?'” Ripple recalls of her phone call to Myers, who had taken time off of teaching to raise her six children. “And Christie just said, I’ll do it in a heartbeat.'”
So Myers suited up once again, this time for a much larger class. Her private lessons usually included only three students; the jump to 80 swimmers at once took some adjustment, but diving in headfirst comes naturally to Myers.
“You have a lot more responsibility because there’s a lot more to oversee,” Myers says. “That could be a negative, but on the positive side of that is—wow, you can help affect that many more children.”
With their years of experience and close relationship away from the pool, it was easy to pick up where they left off. To this day, the two still operate on their own wavelength when working together.
“We almost beat with one heartbeat,” Ripple says. “We’ve just done it so long that we think alike. We’ve become one for sure.”
It helps that they both find the same aspect of their work to be the most rewarding: the growth they see in young students.
“There is great satisfaction in working with someone who is afraid to even put their nose in the water or even have water in their eyes, and having them be able to not only be safe in the water but to have fun in the water. It hasn’t gotten old,” Myers says.
Both Myers and Ripple get some gratification, and a few laughs, when former students return to Crawfish with their own children enrolled in lessons. It is a welcome reminder that they’ve built lasting relationships.
“Family first,” Ripple says. “That’s the most important thing.”
