During the school year, Wingate University's Cannon Complex Pool is home to the Bulldogs women's swimming and diving team.

But for the past two years, when April comes around, it's the sharks who rule the pool -- the Silver Sharks swim team, that is. Spearheaded by the Wingate swimming squad and senior Christy Cousins, the Sharks compose the Union County Special Olympics swimming program.

A veteran Special Olympics volunteer, Cousins worked with the organization in the summers throughout her high-school years. When she arrived at Wingate, she brought the idea of establishing a Special Olympics swimming program to her teammates as a community-service project they could complete together.

It had been 10 years since the Union County area had hosted a Special Olympics swimming program. Wingate worked with a Union County Special Olympics representative to organize the program. Participants were recruited in a number of ways -- through flyers at the opening ceremonies for the Special Olympics track and field games, through Special Olympics registration and informational packets, and by word of mouth.

The group launched the effort in April 2004.

The program is open to all ages. During the most recent event this spring, participants ranged in age from 8 to 51. Throughout the four-to-five week session, each Special Olympian is paired with a volunteer. Members of campus fraternities assist with the bigger athletes. In those cases, it is a three-on-one ratio, with an athlete, a volunteer and a helper from a fraternity. Volunteers follow a curriculum designed by Cousins, who used her previous experience with Special Olympics, as well as with the American Swim Coaches Association's "Swim America" swim school, to develop the program's course of activity.

"Most of the participants hadn't even been in the water, really," said Cousins. "We do a lot of swimming, but we do a lot of playing, too. There's always a lot of nerf balls and beach balls flying, a lot of diving for rings and water walking."

While the NCAA postgraduate scholarship recipient admits overseeing and organizing the program has been a challenge, it has been one worth tackling.

"We're getting to watch them grow and become accustomed to the water and be excited about it," she said.

But it's not just the participants who are growing and advancing. The Union County Special Olympics Swimming Program is thriving, too.

At the beginning of this year's session, Wingate swimmers asked participants to generate a team name and logo. From the entries, they settled on the Silver Sharks, and they now have T-shirts proudly bearing the name and logo.

Beyond establishing an identity, the swimming program started out with 27 participants in the first year, and while that number dipped to 17 in the second year, Cousins and crew added a mini swim meet after the four weeks of instruction. The competition is designed to not only reward the Olympians for a job well done, but also to show them and their parents just how far they have progressed.

The meet featured four events -- the fun water walk, ring fetch, a 25-yard noodle race and a 25-yard dash. Each finisher received a balloon. Later that evening at another new addition to the program -- a dance to celebrate the completion of the program -- each participant also was awarded a medal to mark their accomplishments.

The efforts of the Wingate women's swimmers have not gone unnoticed. The Bulldogs recently were honored as the 2005 Civic Group of the Year. The honor surprised Cousins, who wasn't quite sure what to expect when she and her teammates dived into the endeavor.

"My expectations were more about us being able to do service learning and being able to give back to our sport and our community," she said. "It's about getting involved in the community, getting these kids excited about swimming and introducing them to a sport that's given so much to us."

Cousins graduated this spring with a degree in communications and public relations. Just as the program has all the earmarks of going the distance, Cousins plans to return to Wingate in the fall to serve as a graduate assistant swimming coach and work on a master's degree in business administration. She also plans to return to the Sharks, although in a slightly different capacity that will allow her to spend more time in the water and give some of the other student-athletes on the squad the chance to step up and take charge.

Even as she hands off the lead role, Cousins has an idea about the direction she'd like to see the Sharks swim. Someday she hopes members of the Silver Sharks will be skilled enough to make a splash at the larger meet in Charlotte, North Carolina, which features more advanced swimmers.

So far, only three Sharks can make it all the way across the pool swimming freestyle. That's OK, though. Cousins isn't in any hurry.

"We want to encourage them. We don't want to push them," she said. "I'm excited about being in the water and being a coach and wearing my Silver Sharks T-shirt."