YMCA filled with activities for youths

The Spokane Valley YMCA opened its doors on May 1, 2000. Since then, its impact has been felt throughout the Spokane Valley.

Through its memberships and its programs, the downtown and Spokane Valley YMCA touches the lives of a great many people in Spokane County, Spokane Valley manager Dan White said.

“We are involved with one out of every 15 individuals in Spokane County,” White said. “We have 10,500 members at the Spokane Valley branch. Downtown has about 3,000.”

And plans are under way for a north Spokane branch similar to the one in Spokane Valley that would significantly expand that reach.

“Our goal is to get to one person in 10,” White said.

According to its annual report, the YMCA of the Inland Northwest, which includes both the downtown and Spokane Valley YMCA, served more than 33,000 individuals in 2005, with one out of every six Spokane County children under the age of 18 involved in its programs.

More than 5,000 Spokane County kids are involved with YMCA youth programs. The aquatics program involved 8,600 individuals; day camps involved 8,700; 900 kids are involved in the YMCA child-care program; and wellness programs had 1,400 participants.

“Fitness classes are included in the price of a membership,” White said. “And they’ve been very popular. We have between 1,000 and 2,000 visits per day with people just coming in, depending on the weather. When it was 90 degrees outside the other day we were pretty quiet in here.

For “adult classes we do fitness classes and fitness orientation. We focus on what we call ‘returning exercisers,’ people who are coming back in and trying to get back into a routine. And we see a lot of people recovering from knee and hip replacements. The Downtown YMCA also does a lot with cardiac recovery – once people finish their St. Luke’s program, they continue on at the Y.”

Programs run the gamut: from general fitness programs to organized basketball, volleyball and indoor soccer.

“Right now our big push is for our contact football program for youngsters – Grid Kids,” White said. “We’re one of the few groups that offers contact football. That will be for kids starting in the third grade.

“We’re also excited about a couple cheerleading camps that are coming up. We’re partners with the Spokane Shock cheerleaders. They work out here and will be helping with our dance classes. And we have all the football players and coaches in here from the Spokane Shock as well.”

There’s a special emphasis on youth.

Athletes from the various Spokane Valley schools can regularly be found training at the Y.

“One of the major differences here is that all of our trainers are here to help individuals,” White said. “No one here is paid on commission. They aren’t here to sell anything. They’re just here to help people.”

The YMCA goes beyond just helping athletes train, however.

“We have a program called Y-FY, which stands for YMCA Fitness for Youth,” White said. “It trails off during the summer, but it’s been very popular. We have a 30-foot climbing wall in here, which gives kids a great upper body workout.

“You can’t get kids to lift weights, but you can get them to climb a wall and they’ll never know the difference.”

The YMCA skateboard park also has been extremely popular since it opened.

“Last year was our first full summer with the skateboard park and we’re very pleased with how popular it’s been,” White said. “We’ve been able to sponsor some big skateboarding events and we’re hoping to do more of that in the future.

“The park we have now is just Phase I of a three-phase park, so it will eventually be much bigger than anything in the Northwest. Part of it will even be covered so that it can be used year around.”

Perhaps the greatest impact by the Spokane Valley YMCA has been its swimming pool and aquatics programs.

Learn-to-swim programs, which begin with infants as young as 6 months, turn out 200 new swimmers every five weeks.

“Just in group swim lessons alone we’ve done more than 6,000 lessons,” aquatics manager Jeff Polello said. “We have schools and private schools that come in for lessons.”

The YMCA partners with Spokane Area Swimming. Competitive swimmers are in the pool starting at 5 a.m. to train – which is just the start of a busy pool day.

“The pool opens at 5 a.m. and we start trying to kick kids out of the pool at 9:45 so we can close by 10 p.m.,” White said.

Spokane Valley YMCA produces the majority of lifeguards for Spokane area swimming pools.

“We certify more guards than everyone else put together,” Polello said. “In just the last two months we’ve have certified about 80 guards.”

Of course, the Spokane Valley YMCA also employs more lifeguards than anyone else, too.