How Aquatics & Education Grew From One Instructor to a Community Water Safety Hub

Aquatics & Education started in 2022 with Brooke Bothun teaching every lesson herself and tracking families on a spreadsheet. Four years later the program has doubled capacity, runs community water safety events with the City of Palm Bay and Health First, and has a website she built herself. This is how she got out of the admin and back into the water.

On a Thursday morning in June, roughly 100 kids stood on the deck at the Palm Bay Aquatic Center on the campus of Eastern Florida State College. Before anyone got in the water, they watched a lifeguard pull a mock drowning victim from the pool, shout for someone to call 9-1-1, and start CPR while Health First’s First Flight helicopter landed nearby.

Then Brooke Bothun, founder of Aquatics & Education, led the group in a chant: “I promise never to swim alone.” The kids split into age groups and skill levels for lessons.

That morning is the clearest picture of what her organization has become, and of the problem it exists to solve. Drowning is the leading cause of death for U.S. children ages 1 to 4, and the second leading cause of unintentional injury death for ages 5 to 14. An estimated 4,000 fatal unintentional drownings happen in the United States each year, along with about 8,000 nonfatal drownings.

The event itself was part of something much larger. The World’s Largest Swimming Lesson launched in 2010 through the World Waterpark Association and runs at pools, waterparks, and swim schools around the world as a drowning prevention platform. In 2026 it was held on June 25.

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“We can’t do it alone”

Aquatics & Education is a community-based swim school in Brevard County, on Florida’s Space Coast. It runs learn-to-swim programming and stroke development that prepares kids for a swim team environment, with a mission of expanding access to water safety education.

The organization was founded in 2022 by Bothun, a lifelong swimmer and educator who grew up around Florida’s waterways. She is also vice president of the Florida Swims Foundation and water safety chair for the Brevard Coordinated Child Safety Initiative, and she has secured local and national grants to expand access to swim lessons.

What makes the program unusual is how deliberately it operates through other organizations. Bothun works with Brevard Public Schools, local fire departments, health systems, the Healthy Start Coalition of Brevard, and the Brevard Coordinated Child Safety Initiative. For the World’s Largest Swimming Lesson, she partners with the City of Palm Bay, Palm Bay Fire Rescue, and Health First.

"At the end of the day, it's not just one entity giving all these resources. It's a collaborative team effort. We can't do it alone. I can't teach every kid how to swim. I can't teach every kid how to know how to be safe around the water, but it's being a team effort in that collaborative system."

That belief shapes the event design. Every child is paired with a swim instructor and a firefighter, because drowning reaches past the family at the center of it. “Drowning has a ripple effect. It doesn’t just affect that one family in that tragic incident,” Bothun said.

Parents get in the water too, especially for early learners who are not yet confident. An instructor with the right certification shows the parent what they can do themselves between lessons. “It’s a vulnerable process, but it’s an important one too,” she said.

New in 2026 was an introduction to lifeguarding session for kids ages 10 to 15, aimed at a shortage that affects Florida and the rest of the country. “We need more lifeguards, not only in the state of Florida, everywhere,” Bothun said.

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The pool deck problem

All of that growth ran into a practical limit: one person.

Bothun taught the lessons, answered the phones, and managed the business. Registration lived on a spreadsheet.

"I did the whole Excel sheet thing. When you are just that one swim instructor answering the phones, in the water, sun tired, getting home from weather delays and all you want to do is just lay on the couch."

The administrative load was only part of it. She wanted families to be able to do things for themselves, without waiting on a phone call back.

"I wanted the parents, the families to have that ability to go online and do it themselves."

She also wanted to see her own business clearly. Which classes fill, where the gaps sit, and where she could open more availability. A spreadsheet does not answer those questions well, and it does not scale when you add a second instructor, a new partner, or a city contract.

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What changed once families could register themselves

Aquatics & Education moved to Captyn, and the first change Bothun points to is what parents experience. Families create one account, add each participant, and register for the class that matches their child’s age group. No duplicate accounts for siblings, which is the feedback she hears most.

"That's one feedback I've gotten a lot from my families, that they don't have to make two accounts."

The second change is speed on the phone. When a parent calls and asks where to sign up, Bothun can look up the family mid-call, register them, or text a direct link that drops them into the right program. The class filter helps when a family has multiple swimmers, and the direct link removes the guesswork when they have one.

"I'm able to get on it when I'm in the middle of a phone call."

The third change is what the data shows her. She can see accounts, registrations, and sibling relationships, and use that to find gaps in her own scheduling instead of guessing.

"Seeing the data I'm able to pull from Captyn is extremely helpful for my organizational structure, as well as to see where the gaps are in my own organization."

Communication changed too. Before a recent open house, she pulled up families by age category and program, wrote one message, and sent it by email and text. The same capability covers Florida summer weather. When afternoon storms push a session, a message goes out in seconds and parents know what to expect.

Community events fit the same system. Bothun planned to run World’s Largest Swimming Lesson registration through Captyn this year so she could see who signed up by age group before the day arrived, then staff each group with the right number of instructors and firefighters. Capacity on the pool deck is a safety decision, not a marketing one, and she needs the counts in advance to make it.

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The website she built herself

The other half of the problem was the front door. Bothun also built a new site through Captyn’s website partnership with 111.

"I'm not in the technology industry. I'm not a web designer, but it was so user friendly. All I would change is that I did it sooner."

For an owner whose entire business is a first impression with a nervous parent, that matters more than it sounds. The first five minutes a family spends with your program set the tone for everything after, a pattern we wrote about in Create a World-Class New Parent Experience.

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The harder part: getting out of the water

The systems were the easy half of the transition. The harder half was identity.

"I've been the one in the water the whole time and I'm still in the water, which I love. But to grow my organization, to improve access to water safety and swim lessons, I have to be out of the water a little bit more."

Bothun describes that as her biggest challenge as an advocate: the person who most wants to be teaching is the person who has to step onto the deck to hire, train, and build the partnerships that put more kids in the water.

The capacity numbers suggest the tradeoff is working. Since moving to Captyn, Bothun said the program has doubled in capacity, helped along by the City of Palm Bay partnership. The time that used to go into registration and rescheduling now goes into curriculum and hiring.

"Captyn is making everything easier for me where I'm able to have more time out and in the water, able to focus on my curriculum, able to focus on hiring more instructors to grow this program."

Onboarding was part of that. “Captyn supported me before I even had questions,” she said. “They anticipated because they know our organizational structure.” It is the same pattern Russ Eidman describes in how Patriot Swim School cut daily admin work by 75%, and the one Ashleigh Kramer describes in turning a swim team’s small lessons program into a real business.

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What other swim school owners can take from this

• Count the hours before you count the money. Bothun's only regret is waiting. The spreadsheet worked, right up until the business outgrew it.
• Treat the parent's first five minutes as a product decision. One account, the right class, and a link that works on a phone will do more for enrollment than any ad. If your families are still emailing you to register, start with communication that creates confidence.
• Build the partnerships before you need the capacity. Schools, fire departments, health systems, and municipal pools bring reach that no single swim school can buy. The operations have to keep up with what those relationships create, which is the lesson behind New Trier's approach to running many programs in one system.
• Use your own data to find open lanes. The registrations you already have will tell you which age groups are underserved and where to add a class.

And if you are still deciding, Bothun’s advice is short:

"Don't wait, just do it. Do your research, watch these testimonials, go online, have your demonstration with Captyn. The one regret I have is waiting."

Aquatics & Education now runs lessons, community water safety events, and a growing partnership network across Brevard County, with its founder spending more of her week on the business and still getting in the water. If your swim school is running on spreadsheets and phone calls, see how Captyn works for programs like yours.

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