Madison County Record : News

YMCA fundraiser goes swimmingly

(Updated: Thursday, April 26, 2007 2:17 PM CDT)

Emily Howard, Madison Record

The Madison YMCA is $30,000 closer to being built, thanks to some local swimmers, officials and one Olympic champion.

At the Swim-a-thon fundraiser held Apr. 20, swimmers were able to log 604,500 sponsored yards for a tentative total of $30,000 raised. The final total, which may be more with late donations, will be announced in two weeks, said Dr. Danny Cartwright, the Swim-a-thon committee chairman.

The event began with relay races featuring local swimmers, business owners, students and even Madison Mayor Sandy Kirkindall, sporting kicky rainbow-colored swim trunks. The winner from the gold, silver and bronze level sponsor races was indeed the mayor's team, with the help of Margaret Hoelzer, the current world champion gold medalist in the 200-meter backstroke. Also on the winning team were Daniel Armstrong, who has a full swimming scholarship to the University of Alabama, and Jenny VonJouanne, the gold medal winner at the Southeastern Short Course Championships in Nashville.

In the second heat, which featured only students from Madison City Schools, the winner was the Heritage Elementary relay team of Cindy Ratkovich, Tina Harris, Chris Gunner and Kai Pham.

The overall relay team winner was the Fortune Garden-sponsored team of Ben Fogg, Russell Johnson, Phil Deaton and George Wong.

Swimmers, including Mayor Kirkindall, had two-hour blocks to swim as many lengths as possible, with a maximum of 200 lengths. Sponsors have pledged a monetary amount based on the amount of lengths completed, or simply by donating a flat rate.

The goal was to swim a million yards.

Also at the event, Dr. Dee Fowler, superintendent of Madison City Schools, made an announcement that a program would soon be implemented to teach every third grader in the area to swim. The program will be a cooperative venture between the new Madison YMCA, USA Swimming's Make a Splash program and the city schools, Cartwright said.

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