On a warm summer morning with clear skies, around 160 swimmers gathered June 13 at Gillson Beach in Wilmette to participate in the eighth annual one-mile open-water swim race.
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“This is a place that brings a lot of joy to people and is such a healthy way to celebrate and build community,” said Phil Andrew, co-founder and director of the event.
The Wilmette Open Water swim, or WOW race, is hosted by the Ouilmette Foundation and serves as an athletic event and fundraiser. All levels of swimmers are welcome to enter and participants pay a $76 registration fee, which includes a swim cap and a free towel.
Each year, Andrew said the race raises an estimate of $14,000 to $15,000, with the money going to several community projects including the upkeep and restoration of the Wallace Bowl amphitheater, the Wilmette Park District family scholarship fund, which helps families who need financial assistance, and ALS research.
The race started at 7 a.m. on the north side of Gillson Beach, with swimmers racing down to the south end of the beach and circling back around the buoys to reach the finish line. Participants also had a 30-minute warm up before the race to practice techniques and feel the water temperature.
The conditions for the race were calm, with little to no wind and flat water as swimmers entered Lake Michigan, making the colder 60 degree water more manageable, participants said. Andrews said conditions vary year to year, especially with water temperature and weather.
Matthew Borovik, a competitive swimmer with COHO Swim Club, a USA Swimming affiliate team located in Deerfield, finished first in the race at 7:34 a.m. Borovik just finished his junior year at Rider University and is transferring to Augustana College in the fall to compete on their swim team. He also tied for first place in the open swim race last year.
“It’s nice to win,” said Borovik. “I’ve been doing the swim for like four years now, and the one mile open water is good training.”
Among some of the participants, there were high school, college and professional swimmers. Also in attendance was Glenn Mills, a former member of the 1980 Olympian team who didn’t compete due to the Olympic boycott of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
June Dichtel, a 16-year-old student at New Trier High School and local swimmer for NASA Wild Aquatics, a competitive swim team and USA swimming affiliate in Evanston, tied for second place in the race. She has been partaking in the one-mile open water swim for five years, coming with her parents who were also there to support her Saturday.
Dichtel’s father is an experienced open-water swimmer and Northwestern University professor.
“I’ve been swimming since I was like five or six, but my family’s always in the water,” said Dichtel.” “The race is really fun, it’s a good group of people and it raises money for a lot of local things.”
Andrew and fellow open-water swimmer Holly Gilson started the event in 2018, after spending time at Gillson Beach and discussing an opportunity to start a race where swimmers across the community could come together to support a good cause.
Andrew comes from a family with a strong swimming background and began swimming at the young age of six. He went on to earn a scholarship at the University of Illinois, where he became team captain. However, he took a break from the sport after an incident that made headlines decades ago and many on the North Shore still remember, when he was shot trying to save his parents from a hostage situation in their own home.
In 1988, when Andrew was a college junior, a 30-year-old babysitter with a history of mental illness, Laurie Dann, went to the Andrews home after shooting six children at Hubbard Woods Elementary School in Winnetka. She forced her way into the residence, and though Andrew was able to get one gun out of her hand and his parents freed, he was shot in the chest and taken to Highland Park Hospital.
In a standoff with police surrounding the home, Dann went into the bedroom and shot herself. After Andrew’s lengthy recovery, he returned to college and competitive swimming and has since advocated for handgun control and violence prevention.
“Swimming saved my life,” he said.
Now, Andrew is married to a swimmer and all four of his children have grown up participating in the sport at different levels. Two of his children have also gone on to swim for the U.S. Naval Academy.
He said it has been a proud moment to see the race grow and evolve over the last eight years and hopes that more swimmers from all over the country will come and participate for future races.
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“We keep seeing it grow year by year as more people come to find out about it,” said Andrew. “This is a growing sport, and swimmers all over are really coming to appreciate it.”