After 39 Years, Swim Instructor Retires From Rockville Swim Center

After nearly 40 years of teaching people to swim, Sonja Lazarowitz is having a hard time hanging up her fins.

“It's just been my life and right now I'm lost because I'm out,” said Lazarowitz,who will turn 83 in August.

“I’m lost,” she said.

Chances are, if you live in Rockville and you know how to swim, you have Lazarowitz to thank.

“Miss Sonja” has taught and coached at least two generations of swimmers since she began at Rockville Swim Center in 1974.

But due to some health problems, Lazarowitz is putting teaching on hold.

The swim instructor and coach gave her last lesson at Rockville Swim and Fitness Center on April 20.

“I'm worried how to emotionally survive breaking away from what I've done for so many years,” she said.

Teaching Others to Go With the Flow

Lazarowitz arrived at the swim center at a time with a passion for competitive synchronized swimming—at a time, she said, when people still needed to be convinced that competitive synchronized swimming was a legitimate sport.

“It’s harder than it looks,” said Dorothy Sullivan, 46, who joined Lazarowitz’s synchronized swim team when she was in middle school.

Lazarowitz coached girls at the swim center, at the Jewish Community Center and throughout suburban Washington, DC, training fledgling swimmers for high-profile meets across the country.

“She was tough, but fair,” Sullivan said. “She made it fun.”

According to Sullivan, her team practiced four times a week, from 9 to 10 p.m. on school nights—the only time slot they could get. Every night, Lazarowitz had to install and remove the underwater speakers.

Sometimes they wouldn’t leave the pool until 11 p.m.

Sullivan said seeing her long-time coach and friend retire was a bittersweet moment.

“She's done it her whole life,” Sullivan said. “It's hard to leave that, even if you are ready.”

How She Got Started Swimming

Lazarowitz said she taught herself to swim when she was in her early 20s. She working as a supermarket manager in Germany, her native country, and took to the pool during her lunch breaks.

She moved to the United States when she was 26, settling initially in upstate New York, where she got more into competitive synchronized swimming, which led to coaching and teaching.

By the time she landed in Rockville in 1970s, she was working 80 hours a week between Jewish Community Center, the Rockville Swim Center and at pools throughout the DC-mtero region.

“The impact here is going to be huge,” said Debbie Bouwkamp, Rockville swim center’s aquatic supervisor. “There’s only one Sonja.”

What Happens Next

Bouwkamp said there have been talks of having Lazarowitz come back part-time.

“That is my plan,” said Sonja, who said she would like to work five or six hours a week. “But I will not come back until my body gets better.”

Lazarowitz taught so many classes for so long that former students stop her in the grocery store and in the mall. Those interactions have progressed over the years from, “remember me? You taught me how to swim” to “you taught my daughter how to swim.”

Today, more common are interactions like the one that happened during Patch’s interview with Lazarowitz at North Pool, when a gray-haired woman in a bathing suit noticed her and said, “You know, you taught my son and my grandson how to swim.”

Lazarowitz said this is what keeps her coaching and teaching.

“I put children on the swim team at age 5, swimming the freestyle and the backstroke in good form,” Lazarowitz said. "There's so much satisfaction when you get the compliments, all the appreciation the parents give you."