Young American divers with disabilities and local Caymanian interns have spent the last three weeks diving together.
Each year, the Stay-Focused charity brings the young visitors to Grand Cayman to learn how to dive, or brush up on their skills, and this year brought more than a dozen of them to the island.
Several of the visiting divers are athletes in other endeavours, like basketball or swimming, and get to spend a week mastering the new underwater activity.
Juliette Nau, 15, from Spokane, Washington, for example, heard about Stay-Focused and its mission to introduce youngsters to diving through her coach in her adaptive sports programme, where she plays basketball and hockey and competes in track and field.
She said doing her first dive was “a little scary at first, but once I hit the water, I knew. I felt immediately that it was amazing.”
“Under the water, it’s like a whole new world,” she added.
Cole Morlock, 16, from Pennsylvania, who swims competitively but had never scuba dived before, said of his first experience donning a tank and heading underwater, “I loved seeing all the marine life.”
Another new diver, Alex McGowan, 15, also from Spokane, said he’d enjoyed seeing “the coral and fish” during his dives, and that encountering sharks had been among the highlights of the experience.
The divers spotted reef sharks and nurse sharks. Photographs taken by Capture Cayman’s Lisa Collins show some of the divers hovering near a nurse shark that was nestled on the sand by a reef.
Christian Estes, 17, from Connecticut, found out about the Stay-Focused programme during a swim meet. He said he enjoyed all six dives that he and his fellow divers took part in during their stay in Cayman, which began with learning how to use dive equipment in a pool at The Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman, on 11 Aug.
Ben Vondrak, 16, from Atlanta, Georgia, who participates in basketball, track and tennis, had friends in last year’s programme and they recommended it to him. “It was amazing,” he said of his week learning to dive in Cayman. “I love marine biology, and I saw so much marine life. The coral was really beautiful.”
Returning to Cayman for the 12th time this year was Arielle Rausin who, after completing the Stay-Focused programme, has become a mentor to the groups that come here. She said all the young people who took part this year were fast learners, “who picked up everything really quickly”.
She added, “It’s really fun to watch them on day one, and then on day five, the way they progress.”
Cayman interns
Each year, Caymanian interns are chosen to work with the young US visitors, dive with them and, in the process, gain their PADI Scuba Diver certifications.
Jason Ricketts, 18, has been working with Stay-Focused every summer since 2022, first as an intern and now as a manager of interns. He has now qualified as a rescue diver and plans to get his next qualification as a dive master.
The other interns were Tareek Ricketts and Rayne Harding, both of whom have participated in previous years.
Jason said he’d enjoyed being part of the programme this year, which “went very smoothly, and everyone was smiling”.
Three separate groups of divers were involved, making a number of boat and shore dives.
Two of the groups were on ‘reunion trips’, having made their first visits to Cayman to learn how to dive last year, while the third was here for the first time, and each spent a week on island, explained Roger Muller, founder of Stay-Focused.
The charity works with local hotels to accommodate the visiting divers, who can use the hotels’ pools to get familiar with the dive gear they will be using before heading out under the waves. This year, the participating hotels were the Grand Cayman Marriott Resort, The Ritz-Carlton, Grand Cayman, and The Westin Grand Cayman Seven Mile Beach Resort & Spa.
Stay-Focused has been bringing groups of teens and young divers to Cayman since 2004.
Its primary annual fundraiser is participation in the New York City Marathon, and this year 15 runners will be taking part on 2 Nov. to raise sponsorship and funds for the programme, including two from Cayman – Vicki Rankin and Luca Minesola.
Muller has taken part in the marathon four times, but says, now, at 75, he has hung up his running shoes.
Each runner in the marathon commits to raise $5,000, with a team goal of $100,000. Last year, Stay-Focused raised $140,000 through the marathon runners.
For more information, visit the Stay-Focused website.
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