While the City of Scotts Valley has exploded with retail and dining opportunities in the past several years, city leaders have discovered another way to help local residents keep their cool during the summer heat.
June 2 was the grand reopening of the Siltanen Family Swim Center at 147 Vine Hill School Road in Scotts Valley, and the refreshed pool was afloat with aquatic athletes, all vying to dip their toes into the early days of summer.
Earlier this spring, the Scotts Valley City Council approved a lease for the facility to Pacific Flow Swim School. The full-service swim school is owned and operated by Scotts Valley resident Jeff Griffith-Jones, who brings more than 20 years of experience in aquatics and recreation to the facility.
Pacific Flow Swim School offers a USSSA Accredited Swim School run by lifeguard-certified professional instructors, year-round swim lessons for infants to adults in small group settings, recreational swim times throughout the week, two-hour party rental blocks available on weekends, and Red Cross Lifeguard and CPR/AED/First Aid Courses.
The City is looking forward to the upgrades Griffith-Jones has planned for the pool, which include installing a steel structure with canopy cover and rollup walls for comfortable year-round swimming, state-of-the-industry UV filter to remove undesirable water compounds, and new filter and pump system to deliver drinking-quality water to swim in.
“This has been a long time coming for me, with initial brainstorming around five years ago,” said Griffith-Jones. “The pandemic was a constraint, the cost to start a pool in the area was a major factor, and serendipitously it all came together with the City looking for a partner in aquatics, the Siltanen Pool being available, and my dream. I’m beyond fortunate to be afforded this partnership with the City of Scotts Valley, and in no small part due to the constant effort and support from Allison Pfefferkorn, recreation manager.”
So what sets Pacific Flow apart from other aquatic programs?
Pacific Flow is a swim school, which means they focus on the whole child, the whole human, and optimal human experiences, otherwise known as flow theory—hence Pacific Flow. Small group lessons engage students in their social and moral development, and the curriculum follows leading-edge human development/aquatic theory.
Instructors have the ability to teach the highest-quality adaptive swim sessions, private lessons for those who need them, open swim, and even host parties and aqua fitness classes. In short, it’s not just about drowning prevention, or just about swimming mechanics, it’s about developing a sustaining love for one of the most rewarding life skills there is.
The Pacific Flow crew is a work hard/play hard team who were hired for their love of kids, ability to learn and grow, and willingness to serve. Every staff member is background checked, trained in abuse prevention, clears the California Guardian Registry, and all instructors are Red Cross Lifeguard certified.
Pacific Flow is dedicated to serving everyone. Drowning is still the leading cause of death for children 1-4 years old in the United States, and quite high for all children as well, and there is a direct correlation between household income and drowning. Children without the means to enroll in lessons are more susceptible.
Through a partnership with the Hope Floats Foundation, fundraising efforts will build a fund that will go directly to swim lessons for local Scotts Valley/Santa Cruz County children, dollar for dollar.
In addition, Pacific Flow has the best water—it means fewer distractions and better safety and health for both instructors and students. Upon being offered the lease by the City, Griffith-Jones took out a loan to overhaul the mechanicals, including the filter media (filtering to 4.5 microns now down from 8), the heater, UV (the leading solution for eliminating irritating compounds), and several other items.
Finally, the Pacific Flow team are pros.
“This is the type of industry where just about anyone can open up shop if they have access to a pool and they like working with children,” Griffith-Jones said. “For me though, it’s my chosen career. I went to SJSU for undergrad and grad school at San Francisco State for exactly this. I have more than 20 years’ experience, and I am known by some of the best schools in the world due to my proactive participation in the U.S. Swim School Association to further the cause of swim schools.
“Despite Pacific Flow being very small—at least to start with—the professionalism we bring is quite big,” he continued. “We’re a professionally run recreation business that uses the best in everything from infant aquatic child theory, to digital registration, skill tracking and communication, to risk management and staff leadership and motivation. We work so that others can play.”
With the pool now open, Griffith-Jones is excited to welcome swimmers to his school.
“At the end of the summer or early fall, the plan is to install an enclosure with roll-up walls, which will allow full protection in the middle of winter, sun protection in summer, but still celebrate the super-cool scenery that surrounds us—our sunsets are epic and we have cows grazing literally yards away,” he said.
Pacific Flow’s curriculum is divided among 11 levels, all represented by sea creatures who are native to Monterey Bay, and all—loosely for some of them—correlate to the skills the child is learning at the school.
“With recreation as my background and having a swim school in the middle of park, we have some big and bold ideas: more Red Cross classes, camps, triathlon, partnerships with the local schools, complimentary hands-only CPR for the community, events to fund our Hope Floats partnership, and much more,” Griffith-Jones said.
Want to get your family in on the fun? Classes are open for all levels and filling up fast. Visit pacflowswim.com for information and to register.
