Dear Governor Andrew Cuomo and people reading this,

My name is Praise Okodogbe. I am 14 years old. I am a high school freshman who swam in my school's varsity swim team and attended the State Championships and I have been swimming with the Long Island Aquatic Club since 2015. I have been swimming competitively since I was five years old and it has always been a part of my daily life.

Just like other competitive swimmers in New York, I have not been able to swim since March and all of the meets that I was looking forward to like Junior Olympics and Eastern Zones were all stripped away and to have the opportunity to practice and train taken is very painful and aggravating. Now, without our public pools, I do not have any access to a swimming pool.

Swimming is a very intense sport that when you stop for a short period of time, it is harder to get back into shape. This causes us to lose some of our endurance and techniques and when we lose this, we are unable to get closer to our dreams and inspirations. It has been 4 months and we are in desperate need of getting back into the water so that we can catch up on all the time that we had lost. Some of us want to go to the Olympics next year and all of this time that we had been away from the water is not only affecting us physically, it is affecting us mentally because we do not know how much our bodies have changed from the lack of practice.

I know that you have chosen to close public pools. However, I hope that you can reconsider and let the competitive swim teams use the outdoor public pools for lap swimming. Because we are still in the midst of the COVID-19, our coaches will make sure that we remain safe by keeping everything sanitary and clean.

The CDC website says that, "There is no evidence that COVID-19 can spread to people through the water used in pools, hot tubs, or water playgrounds. Proper operation and disinfection of pools, hot tubs, and water playgrounds should kill the virus that causes COVID-19." This indicates that we are not in danger as much as you assume that we would be in. If you open the public pools, you can enforce the rules that the CDC has set for public pools in the website: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/parks-rec/aquatic-venues.html

We are the next generation and we deserve the opportunity to become successful athletes and we are aware of the current issue but this is the present. We MUST be looking into the future and that is more important than anything.

So, on behalf of the competitive swimmers, I ask that you give us the opportunity to swim and recover physically and mentally. Thank you! God bless!