The buoys in the middle were big and colorful and the pool itself was so large that a kid wasn't going to accidentally swim that far over to the deep side. They'd have to basically jump in over there.
AND.....the Y had permission slips that they handed DIRECTLY to the parents before pool days. The camp counselors would be like "will your kid swim, blah blah." So the parent would tell them right there "yes" or "no" and then sign the form stating what the kid could or couldn't do. Even parents with lil Michael Phelps-type kids didn't want them swimming past 4 ft without being there themselves in person.
I learned how to swim at 7 years old at camp. It was a Girl Scouts camp, and they had a site for Boy Scouts, and they kept us separate from the girls. I have an older sister, and my mom wasn’t sending us to two separate camps, and at the time, the other camp which I ended up working at had an entire boys program was too expensive. Once she married my stepdad, we had much more money.
There were three swim levels at Scout camp: red cap, yellow cap, and blue cap. The red caps couldn’t swim at all, and were kept in the 3ft section of the pool. Our free swim was great, because it was a smaller number of boys, and we had the 3 lifeguards, plus our troop counselors. I was red cap half the first summer, but learned to swim mid summer, and graduated to yellow cap. Then I was allowed to go into the 5-7ft section of the pool. The blue caps were allowed to swim the entire pool, and you couldn’t tell them shyt. We also had to do a tip test in the pool with life jackets in order to ride the canoes and kayaks. You had to be a blue cap to take the canoes and kayaks out without a lifeguard at the lake. I was a blue cap my second summer. After 3 summers there, we went to the expensive camp, and they had a rigorous swim program. We thought it was cool because my best friend went, and he was always talking about it. But we were 2 of about 10 black boys. There was one black female who taught the arts and craft class. There were three black female assistant counselors who were former campers. (2 were attractive: I remember them specifically.. Jenna and Tiffany) There were NO black male counselors. Okay, I’m rambling now.
I have various camp stories for days, because our mom always worked full time, and kept us at different camps to keep us busy during the summer.