YMCA scuba about to be reborn! New name same high standards!

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Will YDI have a central record keeping database? I have had several people who have lost paperwork on their world treks and they were unable to track down their certs because they were told that their records were locally kept. They may have been barking up a wrong tree, but....

This is very good news all the way around. Congratulations, ya'll.

Yes there will be a central database and in time accessible on line. That may take awhile. But be assured when an instructor sends in your cert he will have a record and so will YDI. It will be possible to get a new card and to verify training. Keeping records locally would be foolhardy.
 
I'm sure some Y Instructors think it is better because it uses these old-time skills etc... but much of that is overkill and really does little to promote a better diver.

I am curious to know which 'old-time skills' are overkill?
 
I cannot speak for all Y Instructors. But for myself the standards are why I became a Y instructor. I am going to affiliate with the new program because those standards are not going to change. We will still teach deco and doff and don. You will still have to be able to swim. If the OW standards were to be lessened I would not be willing to be a part of it.

As to the effect they have on new divers the reason you may not have seen it is because you've not seen any Y students when they come out of OW. Many of them look like the results after AOW with another agency and a few dives under their belt. We will also be fully supportive of independent instructors.

Many YMCA alumni left the organization when YUSA took over management of it. Before then it was active in many areas. When YUSA took over it instituted procedures and requirements to issue certs that were a real pain. The people in charge of it were unfortunately not divers. They essentially killed it. Walter can give a better account than I in that area but what happened was they expected us to be able to apply for permission to teach the course as classes were formed like they do with lifeguards. Now with lifeguards you have a pretty good idea that come spring you are gonna need a few of them, you can form a class over several weeks. No big deal. You get the names, set up the times, and get the sanction to teach, teach the classes over a few weeks and you're done til next year. You cannot do that with scuba since people come in year round. Another thing that helped hasten the demise of the program is the lack of support for it by the national and local Y's in favor of more lucrative aquatic programs like water aerobics and hydro therapy type exercise programs that more people could take advantage of. Many local Y's kept pushing the scuba pool times to smaller and more inconvenient blocks.

Still another factor is equipment. As it became more diverse and expensive the local Y's did not have the funds to keep up with replacing gear. Y's have suffered from the rise of so-called health clubs that offer more elite services and cater to the clientele that traditionally would have the money to invest in scuba training and equipment. Many Y's now serve groups who simply do not have the funds to purchase scuba gear. When you take all of this into consideration and couple it with standards that call for us to recommend gear to students with their best interests before that of a shop it makes it hard to compete with the larger more well known agencies. But in some areas we compete very well. There are those of us who have affiliations with one or more shops that have a steady client base. The one shop I'm affiliated with now has a good relationship with our local Y. Not as much pool time as we'd like but it still works.

The Y program is the oldest national training program in the US. LA County was and is a local program. YScuba was the impetus and model for all the other US agencies that came after. Initially they all followed the Y model. Then things started to change when profits took precendence over everything. When more and more people got an interest in scuba some saw the potential to make lots of money. It then started to become apparent that the more you put through the more money you made. If you started cutting things you could put even more thru faster. So some things started to go by the wayside. Now you have people who can breath under water. But they still need more training. What they initially received in OW they now have to take a class to learn how to jump off a boat. To properly weight themselves and have good trim they need still another class. The YMCA program and the new YDI program believe that there are certain basic skills that should be taught in open water. THere are advanced levels and specialized courses but they are and will be truly specialized, advanced, and worthwhile. My new UW NAv course will have a minimum of 6 dives and 4 hours of classroom. Whether it will be accepted for distribution in it's original form I don't know but I will have the freedom to teach it so that it meets and if necessary far exceeds the standards adopted.

Payment of tuition does not guarantee issuance of a card. It guarantees training. It is up to the student to satisfy the requirements and earn the card.

I am also not interested in producing what I call "underwater tourists". I want to teach those who truly want to dive. I want to know when my student gets his card he/she is prepared to dive in any conditions similiar to which he/she is trained in, with a buddy and not require a DM or guide. I want them to be able to judge when they need to go easy, ask for further training, or just plain be ok with saying no, I'm not doing that dive. I tell my students from the beginning- Scuba is not for everyone. If it is, then just because it is does not mean you can do any dive anywhere. This is an extreme sport. Is it fun, exciting, relaxing, and if you dive within your training and experience safe. Go outside of that and it may very well hurt, cripple, or kill you.

With that in mind I go with NAUI's philosophy that when I train a student I want them trained as if they were a loved one of mine. I would not feel comfortable putting my wife, son ,daughter, parent etc in a course that is done in a week or two. I want them to know how to swim, how to rescue someone from depth, that they will be ok with a situation demanding the ability to cope with a task such as the ditch and don or bailout. The Y program and the standards it follows gives me that peace of mind. If the standards were to be lowered just to make a profit or compete with an organization that I feel does not put the student's best interest at the forefront in every area, be it training, skills, and even their financial resources I would cease to hold membership in it.

YDI Scuba will be a non profit training agency based on solid learning principles and the needs of the student. It will seek to train divers to the highest standards possible. It will ask of it's instructors the same high standards it always has. It will also ask for input from it's instructors and adopt changes and suggestions where it will benefit the students and the agency. I'm new. But they are willing to give me the chance to rewrite what I believe to be a crucial skill for divers. I welcome any input from other Y instructors in this task. Do you think one of the other agencies would allow me to rewrite one of their specialties? Especially if it would mean toughening and lengthening the course. I doubt it. They'd be ok if I could find more shortcuts and get more people thru. It'd mean more money for them. Maybe for me. But not as much satisfaction or peace of mind.

Am I an idealist? Maybe. But maybe I'm just an instructor who is not doing this to turn out large numbers of divers. But one who is interested in turning out divers that I or anyone else would have no problem getting in the water with even if we were not getting paid to do it.

Jim,

Thank you for the explanation and history of the Y program. I take no exception to anything you say and in fact agree with virtually everything. The only response I really have is that we are an SDI/TDI/ERDI and PSAI facility that addresses some of your concerns in a slightly different manner.

We require our students to pass the basic swim and float tests. If they can not, they do not continue in the class. Tuition has never guaranteed a card in any agency (although it did in one particular shop I worked in - which is why I left there and opened my own.) Struggling students have an options here. Money can be refunded - or they can come to the pool and practice swimming and floating or their skills until they can pass. Our class sizes are never bigger than 6 and usually no bigger than 4 - which offers a more personalized instruction. This allows for efficiency in teaching and learning the skills and shortens overall class time. We treat each student as family from the minute they walk in the door. We don't use shortcuts but we do trim fat. We teach doffing and donning at the surface and underwater - but not "bail outs." There is no practical reason for OW students to learn bailouts.. with the possible exception of a sinking boat... they should never have to do that - and even if their boat is sinking, they should have adequate time to put on their BCD and a pair of fins before exiting the boat.

I agree and we teach people how to dive from boats and shores in our open water class. We don't teach "fluff" specialties. This is where we trim the fat. You should know buoyancy before graduating - you shouldn't need a specialty for that... and the same for many other specialties.

I do disagree with the statement SCUBA is not for everyone... as it can be for everyone albeit with restrictions for some. The HSA and other agencies working with those with disabilities would also likely disagree with you. It is simply important for those with limitations to realize their limitations and dive within their training. It is a good instructors job to let them know their limitations and why it is important to dive within their "comfort zone."

Not all other agencies are bad - but the biggest of the marketeers - PADI and SSI especially have low training standards (in my opinion) and they push people right through the system up the ladder to Instructor simply as a money grab. There are way to many BAD instructors out there... and I'd agree that most are in those two agencies. Of course those agencies also have very good Instructors as well... and so a blanket statement against an organization is not really fair.

I think you'll find many LDS's that teach above and beyond their agencies standards because they realize how low the standards are. The Y may simply have higher standards (I'm not sure,) but SCUBA isn't taught by agencies... it is taught in LDS's by Instructors... and so the best I can say is that learning to dive is a crap shoot... Unless you know an Instructor personally or by referral... it's like hunting through a box of chocolates... you never know what you're going to get.

Thanks again for the informative post - Happy and Safe Diving!
 
jimqh2o:
Do you think YDI can work in a Dive shop. I am a YMCA instructor as well and sometimes we have been hurt a bit by the perception that YScuba is not always dive shop friendly.

Why would you get that idea? Dive shops are not always supportive of YSCUBA, but I've never seen a problem going the other way. When I taught at a dive shop, they pressured me to cut corners.

offthewall1:
I always wondered what the point of YSCUBA was.

It makes more sense to wonder "what's the point of NAUI, PADI SSI and all the other agencies that came along after YMCA. YMCA was training divers before them and there was no need for them to ever exist. What's the point?

offthewall1:
but much of that is overkill and really does little to promote a better diver.

You are mistaken. A diver that completes skills left out of the standards of most agencies but included in Y's standards is more confident, able to deal with problems, both large and small much more effectively and is much less likely to panic when things go wrong.

offthewall1:
Will the new Y be touted to Instructors as something they can do as an Independent such as NAUI and PADI or will it require affiliation like SSI and SDI?

I can imagine YDI adding such a silly restriction and immediately writing off all the independent YMCA Instructors.

ZenDiver.3D:
Will YDI have a central record keeping database? I have had several people who have lost paperwork on their world treks and they were unable to track down their certs because they were told that their records were locally kept.

I've never heard of an agency that didn't keep records in a central location. YMCA always has.
 
And will continue to. I have been in regualar contact with both Tom and Dan. The only real changes administratively is that the ridiculous sanction system is gone.

ALso there will be no requirement that we get permission from a local Y to conduct classes in their service area. We can still negotiate with them for pool time and the like but are free to use other facilities as well.

I personally don't have a local Y per se. What I do have is a shop with it's own pool who is more than willing to work with me and allow me pool time in exchange for referring my students to him for gear. He has instructors from other agencies as well but they are not always available to teach all classes and he has no problem referring them to me.

I also have a few contacts that have shown an interest in learning to dive in a nice easy paced, yet comprehensive, program. And they have friends as well.

Requiring instructors to affiliate with a shop is something I'd have no part of. Why should I take what could be money for me and split the instruction fee when I'm already giving them the high mark up gear sales. I like having the freedom to use any shop, any facility, and any type or manufacturer of gear I feel is in the best interests of the student.

As to some of these skills that we teach that seem to have to practical application you couldn't be further off base as to their true function. The doff and don, bailout, bringing an unconsciuos diver to the surface, and what may seem as like other "70's skills" go a long way in building confidence, task loading ability, and overall comfort in the water. If one of my students would, for instance, do a backward roll off a boat and lose their mask for whatever reason, I can pretty much guarantee that they will handle it cooly and calmly. Or if it gets kicked off, the fact that they've done a bailout or doff and don successfully will just about insure that they will have no issue handling the situation.

The fact that we also review basic skills in EVERY pool session ( and there are usually 6 or 7 of em) means that they have removed and cleared the mask at least 6 or 7 times. And that they have done it while remaining neutral, while swimming, and while swimming sharing air.

How many students of other agencies can say the same thing?
 
I always wondered what the point of YSCUBA was. Not knocking it - just never understood it.

In our area (Maryland) I could not find any Y Instructors. All of the YMCA's in our area have scuba programs run by either PADI, SSI, PDIC or NAUI Instructors and often have long running affiliations with local dive shops.

I found this interesting since there is a large number of YMCA's here but no Y Instructors. Now the Y Instructors will no longer be affiliated with the YMCA but the program will be the same?

In my 12+ years of diving and teaching the world over - I have run across 1 YMCA C-card.

I'm writing all of this because I'm curious where all the YMCA Instructors are and where they''ve been teaching? Can anyone enlighten me? I'm honestly just curious.

Before I opened a shop I contacted YSCUBA (a couple of years ago) and inquired about becoming a Y Instructor since there were none in my area. They sent me a copy of their OW Course and I looked it over and thought - my God - this is what they taught back in the 1970's.

Will the new program still have the antiquities feel? Like something that belongs in the Smithsonian or will it be a more realistic and modern OW program?

I'm sure some Y Instructors think it is better because it uses these old-time skills etc... but much of that is overkill and really does little to promote a better diver.

Will the new Y be touted to Instructors as something they can do as an Independent such as NAUI and PADI or will it require affiliation like SSI and SDI?

Answers are appreciated... I'm curious as to the history of the Y (especially in our region - and why there isn't any,) program content, how it will work and any other info that can be shared.

My wife is Y certified and I hold a Y cert somewhere or other.

Congrats, hope it goes super, maybe I will put in for an instructor class now that we have a real education and skill based agency again. No matter, like I said, hope it goes great.

N
 
I always wondered what the point of YSCUBA was. Not knocking it - just never understood it.

In our area (Maryland) I could not find any Y Instructors. All of the YMCA's in our area have scuba programs run by either PADI, SSI, PDIC or NAUI Instructors and often have long running affiliations with local dive shops.

I found this interesting since there is a large number of YMCA's here but no Y Instructors. Now the Y Instructors will no longer be affiliated with the YMCA but the program will be the same?

In my 12+ years of diving and teaching the world over - I have run across 1 YMCA C-card.

I'm writing all of this because I'm curious where all the YMCA Instructors are and where they''ve been teaching? Can anyone enlighten me? I'm honestly just curious.

Before I opened a shop I contacted YSCUBA (a couple of years ago) and inquired about becoming a Y Instructor since there were none in my area. They sent me a copy of their OW Course and I looked it over and thought - my God - this is what they taught back in the 1970's.

Will the new program still have the antiquities feel? Like something that belongs in the Smithsonian or will it be a more realistic and modern OW program?

I'm sure some Y Instructors think it is better because it uses these old-time skills etc... but much of that is overkill and really does little to promote a better diver.

Will the new Y be touted to Instructors as something they can do as an Independent such as NAUI and PADI or will it require affiliation like SSI and SDI?

Answers are appreciated... I'm curious as to the history of the Y (especially in our region - and why there isn't any,) program content, how it will work and any other info that can be shared.

We have, and will continue to teach YScuba/YDI in Maryland and Pennsylvania. (East Coast Divers, LLC - Hagerstown, MD)

I share your confusion and have expressed my frustration with the relationship the YMCA had with the Scuba program. I have belonged to my local YMCA for many years, and I have not seen the support given to our program that I feel should be. We rent the pool at the same rate as other local instructors who no longer teach YScuba, We do not get any special treatment in scheduling calsses, in fact, we are given no special accomodation at all. I am not saying I expect any, I am just showing examples of the YUSA's lack of support for YScuba. I believe getting out from under the YUSA is exactly what this program needs.

I hope one day the YUSA realizes what it has lost. 50 years of teaching a quality program in nothing to sneeze at. I hope their loss is our gain.

Safe diving-
 
Sean,
I got word from Dan that he will be coming to our area. Not sure when. I don't expect him til after DEMA. Pittsburgh Scuba Center is having a two day scuba fest in december. I'd like to see him and/or Tom both show up. It is going to be a pretty big deal. 2 Days of workshops and presentations. If you're interested I'll keep you in the loop regarding this as well.
 
Jim, Do you think YDI can work in a Dive shop. I am a YMCA instructor as well and sometimes we have been hurt a bit by the perception that YScuba is not always dive shop friendly.

Just to expand a bit on what Walter said. Y Scuba has been shop friendly from what I've seen. YDI will be also. What I have not seen is the same cooperation the other way around. As you know standards require us to recommend gear to students based on their needs first and foremost. We take into account their training level, their interests, and their means.

I cannot recommend a 600 dollar bc to a student who is on a limited budget. Or to someone who will only use it once or twice a year. If a person has the means and the need for it, fine. But do you think a shop will be happy with me coming in with my student telling them they do not need weight integration or all the drings and such for what they plan to do?

The best shops are ok with that. Many however want to ring up big sales. Or do you think they'll appreciate me telling the student that they could get a better deal at another place? Or that they may be better off renting for a while longer? Y training has never been unfriendly to shops. People have to buy gear. We all know that. If we do not sell it to them the shop has to. We just don't have to push things they don't need, want, or can't afford on them. When I started out I could have gotten by with a lesser featured bc. But I went for the top of the line based on my needs, interests, and recomendations of the shop owner/instructor. And it's a good bc and has seen a few dives. But looking back it seems that it was overkill. It only sees duty in the pool now. Or if I let my nephew use it. I use BPW for all OW classes and the top of the line bc stays in the pool. Alot of money for pool gear but that's the way it worked out.
 
It seems as if most of the questions about the transition between YSCUBA and YDI Scuba have been answered very well. One thing I would like to emphasize on the "surface entry and don equipment" pool skill is that this skill is designed to reinforce equipment familiarity, not prepare a diver to leap off of a sinking vessel. Statistics from DAN demonstrate that a large number of accidents occur in recently trained divers that can be directly related to gear issues. Since scuba equipment is usually pretty reliable I would say that equipment familiarity or lack thereof contributes to such incidents. YDI Scuba will continue to do what we feel is correct in preparing a new diver for situations that may challenge them, because we believe that scuba should be fun and safe.

Regarding the position of YDI Scuba in dive centers or shops there are many shops in the US that offer YSCUBA certifications, a few exclusively so. YDI Scuba will be very willing to work with local shops and university-based programs but we will also continue to support the independent instructor.
 

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