Swim coach Jane Hughes was in tears yesterday before her final lessons at Queenstown Primary School’s pool, where she has been based for about 18 months.
For several years before that, she ran her school from the Queenstown Lakes District Council-owned Alpine Aqualand.
There, she said, she was able to grow the business, offering a variety of programmes, including a free summer school holiday water safe programme, infant workshops with Plunket, which included free classes with parents at the pool to give them confidence with their babies in the water, and fitness classes.
"I had extra staff, too, so I was able to do all of those things," Mrs Hughes said.
But that all came to an end in 2015 when the council decided to make its own swim school the sole provider at the Frankton facility, despite an online petition in support of the Wakatipu Swim School remaining at Alpine Aqualand, which attracted 389 signatures.
"They saw me as a private enterprise coming in and using a ratepayer paid-for facility to make money ... when, if you look at the books, when you’re teaching swimming you’re not actually making much money. You’re doing it because you want to help ... kids.
"We were paying pool hire, all of our swimmers had to pay pool admission as well — I couldn’t pay it — so on top of my lesson fees they had to pay pool admission, and invariably mum, dad and brothers and sisters were all swimming while the kids were having their swimming lessons."
Mrs Hughes said her school, established in 1995, was then moved to Queenstown Primary School, but because that had a seasonal pool her business halved.
"The traffic and everything the way it is at the moment in Queenstown, I totally get why it is that families don’t want to travel into town at 5 o’clock at night and fight the traffic, so my swimming numbers have dropped."
Mrs Hughes, who was a competitive swimmer, said she established the school after returning from a stint in Australia where she worked in a childcare centre, part of which involved teaching children how to swim.
Back in Queenstown, she immediately saw a gap in the market, with Water Babies catering for mothers and children up to the age of 4, and the swimming club, which took people who could swim 25m.
At the time, Mrs Hughes was employed by the council and running classes as "a hobby".
After having children, she gave up her job at the council. When her children started school, her hobby turned in to a business which was "my life; my everything".
In the last 22 years she had taught thousands of children how to swim, including children of parents she had also taught, and other swimming teachers — something she would love to continue to do.
"I’ve taught swim teachers who have gone away and they’re still swim teaching, so it’s kind of spread ... around the world — more people teaching more kids to swim, which is really awesome."
Mrs Hughes said for about eight years she had researched options to build her own learn-to-swim pool and invested "tens of thousands of dollars" in that process, to no avail.
"I think people see swimming pools as not a good investment, but they don’t understand that a swim school can be a really good investment if it’s run properly and you’ve got year-round access, all day.
"It’s my passion, it’s what I want to be doing. I’m gutted.
"But, onwards and upwards — close one door and hopefully we’ll have another two or three open.
"At this stage I won’t be doing anything more [with swimming], but if a pool came along or I had the opportunity to pull together a community group and we can build another dedicated learn-to-swim pool, then I’ll relook at it."
