Business Profile: Just Add Water and Swim, Cortlandt
Photo credit: Neal Rentz
The memories of how Cortlandt resident Pam Kolber-Zicca first learned how to swim as a youth are not happy ones.
Kolber-Zicca began swimming at age seven, “I was swimming with the fish at Fire Island,” she recalled. She remembered swimming in pouring rain at summer camp at age nine. “Not one person was caring” about how she was swimming, she said, adding no one cared if she was afraid of swimming. “I just wanted someone to be caring and hold my hand,” she said.
Today, Kolber-Zicca is providing her own methods of swim instruction through her company, Just Add Water and Swim. She started her business in 2009 after a mother of a child asked her, “Would you come to my house?” to provide lessons.
“I brainstormed. I had a business coach” who helped her come up with the name of her new business, Kolber-Zicca said.
Kolber-Zicca became a swim instructor in an unusual fashion in 1984. She was working as a receptionist at the White Plains YWCA One of her supervisors told her “you have something on the ball” and suggested that she become a swimming instructor, she recalled.
She provides private lessons, for individuals of all ages, at locations of her clients’ choosing and also at Premier Athletic Club in Montrose. Most of her clients live in Cortlandt and Croton.
“What’s near and dear to my heart is working with special needs adults and children,” Kolber-Zicca said. “I coached Special Olympics in 1985.”
Kolber-Zicca has been described by her clients as a “swim whisperer” because of her ability to work with fearful new swimmers. “I sing songs with them if they’re children. I relate stories to adults, that I feel their fear,” she explained.
Kolber-Zicca said when she was teaching an adult how to swim in the 1980s she told the person to go in the deep water portion of a pool and not be afraid. Shortly after that lesson Kolber-Zicca became frightened on a ski lift and she subsequently apologized to the person whom she told not to be afraid of the water.
“I want each person I work with to feel accomplished and safe,” Kolber-Zicca said. “It is very rewarding to see the progress of each fearful child and adult and seeing their self-confidence grow when seeing themselves float for the first time or jump into the deep end. It’s the inspiration that’s always kept me going.”
Kolber-Zicca said she is gratified when she helps someone to swim. “It gives me extreme satisfaction,” Kolber-Zicca said.
For more information about Just Add Water and Swim visit its Web site, justaddwaterandswim.com or the Premier Athletic Club site, premierathletic.com.
