The SCUBA Gym Grand Reopening will be held from 5-7 p.m. Tuesday at Murphy Health & Fitness, 695 Connahetta St. But there’s so much more to it than just that.
The SCUBA Gym’s mission is to serve the community through their SASP – Special Adventures for Special People – program at Murphy Health & Fitness, coordinator Greg Carroll said. The program is available for weekly therapy, including spring break and holidays, and also hosts summer camps.
What makes the SCUBA Gym extra special is it provides scuba therapy to individuals with special needs, including quadriplegics, paraplegics and those who suffer from multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, Lyme’s disease, Dandy Walker syndrome, hypotonia, fibromyalgia, Ehlers Danlos syndrome, motor neuron disease, spina bifida, autism, Down syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder and other cognitive and/or physical needs.
“We will have our staff as well current and previous students available to answer any question you may have regarding this uniquely, positively impactful experience,” Carroll said.
Longtime readers already know he’s right.
The SCUBA Gym first came to the Cherokee Scout’s attention in 2017, when we wrote about a weeklong program at the former Hiwassee Valley Pool & Wellness Center that provided an outlet for people with special needs or disabilities to not only have fun, but undergo underwater therapy.
“The benefit of underwater therapy is that there’s no gravity, so there’s nothing pulling you down,” David Lawrence, founder of The SCUBA Gym, told the Scout. “We put people in positions underwater that gravity doesn’t let them succeed on land. We can let them walk, we can let them be whole.”
Carroll was the lead camp instructor then.
“The biggest reward is taking somebody and allowing them to understand that if they push themselves beyond what they already are capable of, they’ll find talents they didn’t know were there,” he said.
Georgia Francis of Ranger was seriously injured in an automobile accident several years ago. She is one of many local residents who have enjoyed the camp, which the Scout wrote about in 2019. As a result, she began walking again.
When SCUBA started, Francis said, “I couldn’t put on my booties, or my tank or my goggles even. Now I can put my goggles on, I can put my tank on and I can put my booties on all by myself.”
Carroll is a man of faith, an elder at MountainView Church in Murphy, and his compassion for others motivates him to volunteer. His email tag line is Isaiah 43:2: “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.”
We “all have a responsibility to not keep what we learn in life, but to share it with others,” he said two years ago, because “as we all lift ourselves up; we need to reach back and lift someone else up, too.”
As “we reach out to help others,” Carroll added, we “find that they help us.”
For details, call 828-335-4537, email greg@thescubagym.com or visit “The SCUBA gym NC” on Facebook.
David Brown is publisher & editor of the Cherokee Scout. You can reach him by phone, 837-5122; email, dbrown@cherokeescout.com; or message him on Twitter @daviddBstroh.