U.S. Masters Swimming Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Award

Recipient:	Anna Bass
Year:	2024
LMSC:	Gulf

Anna Bass developed a passion to teach minority children and adult community members to swim over many years and in many ways. Ten years ago, she began coaching at her local high school. Her students had never had a real swim coach and were beginner swimmers. Anna’s school consisted primarily of low-income, Hispanic and Black students. She taught them how to swim and how to play water polo, and the students enjoyed the experience.

Anna took on the Diversity and Inclusion Chair position for the Gulf LMSC in 2022. In 2023, she began teaching USMS Adult Learn to Swim classes with great success. Her students were recent graduates from the high school and her current swim team students helped her teach. Instead of waiting for the next set of students to come to her, Anna participated in Houston’s annual “Art Car Parade”. Her “original” submission to the parade was a car decorated with a swimmer diving over the roof and another emerging from the hood doing butterfly. The response was well received, and thirty interested people scanned a QR code that very day.

Her passion and enthusiasm and her “outside the box” thinking earned her the 2024 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion award.