Kennedy to help host benefit swim clinic Sunday in New Haven

Avon’s Madison Kennedy

Four of Team USA’s finest swimmers, including Avon’s Madison Kennedy, will be in New Haven on Sunday, Jan. 6, at the Hopkins School to host a swimming clinic to explain how they went from summer league swimmers to Olympic contenders. Gold medalist Anthony Ervin and Olympic medalists Kara Lynn Joyce and Kim Vandenberg will be teaching along with Kennedy at the Mutual of Omaha BREAKout swim clinic.

Cost is $100 per swimmer with all proceeds going to the “My Sandy Hook Family Fund” to help the families impacted by the tragic elementary school shootings in Newtown on December 14. Members of the Newtown Torpedoes swim team, which lost a 7-year-old member of their team in the incident, are invited to attend free of charge. Interested swimmers should contact [email protected] or call 203-494-5704 for more information. There is a limit of 100 swimmers. The clinic runs from 1-5 p.m.

“Mutual of Omaha is going to donate the goody bags which contain 2 DVD’s, a poster, notebook and a t-shirt that says, ‘I raced a gold medalist today!
What did you do?’,” said Josh David, who helps coordinate BREAKout swim
clinics around the country, to SwimSwam.com. “Most swim families pay $50
for an hour private swim lesson but here you are getting four Olympians for
4 hours plus a $40 goody bag. For a kid to say I raced Anthony Ervin or
Madison Kennedy…priceless! To spend a day swimming with your heroes for a $100 donation is a steal and it’s all going to a great cause.”

Kennedy, who had a pair of top 10 finishes at the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials
in the 50 and 100 freestyle, is training to compete in Rio in the 2016
Olympics.

“Hopefully our time with swimmers of Newtown and the surrounding
area will brighten their outlook and refresh their spirits,” Kennedy told
SwimSwam.com. “There is one thing every swimmer on the U.S. team has in
common…overcoming adversity. Every single one of us has had to learn to
persevere, focus on the positive and never give up. We just want them to
know the USA swim team is behind them and thinking of them.”

Read more about the Newtown benefit event and swimmers attending in this story from SwimSwam.com.