By Emily Miller

REXBURG—There are a lot of dreams coming true in this story—Dodie Beavin’s dreams to open her own pool, her kids’ dreams to see more of their mom, and eastern Idaho residents’ dreams to have another year-round swimming option. 

Pirates and Mermaids Swim Academy, at 5060 W 5200 S, is open and ready to welcome the community for lessons and open swim hours. 

Beavin says the process started in earnest nearly three years ago, on Oct. 10, 2018, when she and her kids used flour to mark their field to show an excavator where to dig the deep end of the pool. 

It was a leap of faith for Beavin. As a newly-single mom, her goal was to find a way to provide for her family while still being able to spend a lot of time with her kids. She had a good job, but the schedule required her to be sleeping during most of the time she was home. 

“Even though I was there, I didn’t really see them,” she says. 

She decided the arrangement wasn’t working for her or her kids and it was time to get creative. 

“I started brainstorming. I started praying,” she says. 

Building a pool felt like the perfect answer. With a longtime history with aquatics as a swimming teacher and a few years as a pool manager for Rexburg Rapids, it seemed like a natural fit. Also, Beavin knew that parents were always looking for more swimming options for their kids, especially year-round. 

“People were always asking me, ‘Where can I keep my kid in swim lessons? Where can I go because Rexburg Rapids is closing (after summer)?’” Beavin says. “I knew everything I needed to know about running a pool. I knew the plumbing. I was certified to train everyone.”

She had the drive and the know-how, but not the money. 

“I had all the tools that I needed,” she says. “I just didn’t know how to get funding.”

Funding proved to be the biggest challenge in making the pool a reality. 

“I talked to probably seven or eight different local financial institutions,” Beavin says. “I had a business plan written up and I had lots of numbers and figures . . . I knew what kinds of numbers I needed. I knew what kind of costs would be incurred. I could show them that, even if I hit a quarter capacity or half capacity, that I would be able to pay off any loan that I had in three-to-five years.”

Beavin says local lenders were personally supportive and excited about her idea, but when it came down to it, no one was willing to take the risk. 

“A lot of them were like, ‘You know, your business plan looks awesome. It all makes sense. But it’s just not a risk I’m willing to take,’” she says. 

But Beavin had faith that it was going to work out. 

“It was gonna work, I just knew it,” she says. “I had prayed about it and I just felt really good and like it was what I was supposed to do and I shouldn’t give up.”

Beavin says she was praying one day and had a feeling that she should reach out to Sallie Mae and Goldman Sachs. She knew they were financial institutions, but didn’t know more about them beyond that. 

“I reached out to those two companies, and in a week I had enough to buy my pool and I had enough to buy the enclosure material to go on top of it, and the decking material,” she says. 

The pool at Pirates and Mermaids Swim Academy is three competition lanes wide and between one-half to three-quarters the length of a competition pool. It is open year-round with capacity for 49 swimmers. It has a greenhouse dome over the top to keep it covered and warm all year round. 

“The coolest thing ever this summer was that we had a huge rainstorm and it was pouring down and we were swimming in 84 degree water and we could keep swimming,” Beavin says.

It’s a dream come true for the mom who wanted to find a way to spend more time with her kids. Now that she’s teaching swimming lessons from her own pool, she is able to be home and earn a living at the same time.  

“Just yesterday, my 12-year-old was having trouble with his math,” Beavin says. “I said, ‘Tell me what the problem is,’ as I’m helping a 9-year-old figure out how to do the breaststroke.”

Beavin says it has worked out just as she hoped it would.

“I don’t feel like I’m dropping the ball as a mom,” she says. “It’s crazy, but it fulfills all of the needs that we have.”

Beavin’s love for teaching swimming started when she was a college student at Brigham Young University-Hawaii. She went to the university intending to play basketball on the BYU-Hawaii team, but early in the season she learned she was pregnant with her first child. She had to stop training with the basketball team, so she started teaching swimming lessons at a local pool. It was there that she first saw the impact she could have teaching children to swim.

“When I first got trained to teach swim lessons, there was a little kid named Kage,” she says. 

Beavin says Kage had previously had a traumatic water experience and he was very afraid of being in the pool.

“We went really, really slowly, and I worked with him three times a week for three months,” she says. “I was doing all the steps. I was doing all the things that the Red Cross tells me to do. I remember sitting in the water with him and we had been doing the same things over and over again, and he wasn’t really progressing.”

Beavin says she prayed to know how to help Kage to feel safe in the water. 

“I had this thought come into my head, and I know it wasn’t from me, that he just needs to hold on to something when he goes under the water. He feels too free.”

Beavin grabbed a pole from outside of the pool. She showed Kage that she could hold onto the pole in the water and have complete control, and she asked him if he’d like to try it.

“He was super hesitant,” she says. “He grabbed the pole and he was really scared.”

But soon, with two hands on the pole, Kage put his whole head in the water all by himself, for the first time,

“He had the hugest smile,” she says. “Before the end of the day, he was going all the way down to the bottom of the pool.”

At his next lesson, Kage had the courage to swim on his belly with his arms out ahead of him in a Superman pose. Beavin told Kage she wouldn’t hold onto him, but she promised to catch him.

“I caught him and he came up and he was like, ‘I did it!’ and I turned him around so he could see how far he had come, almost halfway across the pool, the short way.”

Beavin says that by the end of the two-week session, Kage was swimming all the way across the pool by himself.

“I’ve had so many of those experiences over the last 17-20 years, and every single time I get that same feeling,” she says. “I’m almost going to cry because I’m so excited for this person.”

Beavin is thrilled to share that excitement with the Rexburg area community. Her pool will be open year-round. For general information on the pool and swimming lessons, visit her website at rexpiratesandmermaids.com. She teaches children and adults. 

To check the schedule and reserve times for open swim, click here. 

You can also follow Pirates and Mermaids Swim Academy on Facebook for up-to-date information and schedules.

See rexburgcommons.com for more local news and events.