About AquaKids

Teaching South Florida children to swim since 1989 — from a first splash to elite senior training, at Westminster Christian School in Palmetto Bay.

Since 1989 CPR & First Aid certified coaches SwimAmerica program All pricing published openly

Our story

AquaKids has been teaching South Florida children to swim since 1989. What began as a lesson program has grown into a full pathway — private lessons for a two-year-old's very first splash, small-group classes as skills take hold, and a competitive team that races under the South Florida Aquatic Club banner.

It's all one program. A swimmer can start in the shallow end without a stroke to their name and, if they want to, keep going all the way to senior-level training without ever changing clubs, decks, or coaches. Most families come to us for a summer of lessons. Many stay for years.

How we got here

A short history — the early years as told by co-founder Coach Lou Manganiello, and the rest by Coach Issy.

1989
Two coaches and a simple goal

Coach Lou Manganiello and Coach Patrick Toner founded AquaKids to bring a genuinely good learn-to-swim program to Kendall, Palmetto Bay, and Pinecrest. The first lessons were taught wherever there was water to teach in — small local pools and family backyards, one child at a time.
The 1990s
The swim team is born

The lesson program worked, and it created a problem worth having: children were finishing it with real strokes and nowhere to take them. So AquaKids started a competitive team — the Sharks — to give its own graduates somewhere to keep going. That decision is the reason the Shark Pathway exists today, and the reason a beginner and a senior swimmer still train under one program.

Coach Lou was coaching at a national level through these years, guiding swimmer Kim Small to first-place finishes in the 400- and 800-meter freestyle at the U.S. Open.
1998
Home at Westminster Christian School

After a season of teaching lessons out of Coach Lou's own backyard pool, AquaKids moved that April into the six-lane, 25-yard pool at Westminster Christian School. The Sharks and the Continuing Education classes started up there, and Coach Lou was named head coach of the school's own swim team — the start of a relationship between AquaKids and Westminster that still holds today.
Along the way
A deck built by its own families

Nearly everything around that pool arrived because AquaKids families put it there. Lap-A-Thons and donations paid for the heaters that let swimmers train through the winter, and then for the awnings, the bleachers, the expanded deck, the lane lines, the electronic timing system, and the lights. Your swimmer trains on a deck that earlier AquaKids families built.
2019
Joining forces with SOFLO

The AquaKids Sharks Swim Team was retired, and the program merged forces with the South Florida Aquatic Club — a partnership that still stands today. Our competitive swimmers race under the SOFLO banner, and together the two programs have taken multiple consecutive Age Group and Senior Championship titles in the Florida Gold Coast.
2024
A new chapter

Coach Issy first came to AquaKids as a high school swimmer, joined the staff the following year, and has coached here for more than a decade since — at every level of the program. Swimming opened other doors along the way, including a volunteer assistant coaching post at Florida International University and a place on staff at the University of Texas's Longhorn Swim Camp. Through all of it, he never left AquaKids. In time, Coach Lou asked him to be his successor.

He was named head coach of the Westminster Christian School swim team, then spent that fall and winter on deck beside Coach Lou for what would be Coach Lou's final season with AquaKids and SOFLO. Coach Issy now serves as Program Director of the AquaKids Swim School and Head Site Coach of the South Florida Aquatic Club's AquaKids Sharks site — carrying forward the program that two coaches started in 1989.

Coach Lou Manganiello

Co-founder

Coach Lou founded AquaKids — the swim school, the swim team and the summer camp.

Before that he spent five seasons as an assistant coach with the University of South Florida women's team, and coached their NCAA Division II championship squad. He was later inducted into the USF Athletic Hall of Fame.

Across forty years of coaching, at every level of the sport, he developed Olympic Trials qualifiers and a long line of high school state finalists and champions, and he coached the AquaKids Sharks to Silver Medal club status with USA Swimming.

What we believe

Technique first, then volume

We are a stroke technique program before we are a yardage program. Swimmers earn distance by earning the stroke — get the mechanics right early and the training means something later. Piling volume onto a rough stroke only builds a habit that takes years to undo.

Progress is a family effort

Swimming is a commitment sport, and consistency is what turns lessons into skill. Arriving on time, coming prepared, sleeping and eating well, and hearing "good effort" more often than "did you win" — that's the part that happens away from the pool.

The deck belongs to the swimmers

We run a closed deck during lessons and practices. It isn't about keeping parents away — it's that coaches need their full attention on the group for safety, and swimmers grow when they listen, problem-solve, and respond to coaching on their own.

Rest is part of the plan

Improvement doesn't only happen in the water. We schedule lighter weeks and time off on purpose, and we encourage younger swimmers to play other sports. Pushing year-round without a break leads to fatigue and stalled progress, not faster swimmers.

Questions are always welcome. Practice time is for coaching, so the best way to talk about placement, progress, or anything else is to send us a note and we'll set up a time. Conversations deserve focus, not a rushed exchange on the pool deck.

One program, three branches

Nine training groups, all named for sharks, all pointing the same direction.

Swim School

Private Learn to Swim lessons and the Angel, Leopard, and Sand Sharks classes — where water safety and the four strokes are built.

See how lessons work

Pre-Team

The Bull Sharks — where swimmers cross from lessons into competitive swimming and learn what being on a team asks of them.

Meet the Bull Sharks

Swim Team

Blue through Great White, plus Hammerhead and Dusky for middle and high school swimmers — and adult Masters.

Meet the Sharks

Where we swim

Everything happens at Westminster Christian School, 6855 SW 152 Street in Palmetto Bay. One pool, one deck, one set of coaches who know your swimmer by name.

The six-lane competition pool at Westminster Christian School, lane lines set, with the deck and bleachers beyond.

Our pool at Westminster Christian School.

Our coaches

Every coach on our deck is CPR and First Aid certified, and our staff hold coaching certifications through the American Swimming Coaches Association and USA Swimming. On the learn-to-swim side, AquaKids is a SwimAmerica program — a nationally recognized curriculum with a defined progression, which is why a swimmer always knows what they're working toward next.

It also means the coach teaching your three-year-old to blow bubbles and the coach running a senior practice are trained in the same system, working from the same stroke standards.

Every group on the pathway, from a first lesson to the senior squad, has a coach who knows it.

Meet the coaches

Come see for yourself.

Tell us about your swimmer and we'll point you to the right starting point.

Send an inquiry Schedule an evaluation