KATS to make waves on Flathead Lake

It’s just a short, end of the season swim for KATS swimming coach Emily von Jentzen.

For everyone else, it’s a six-mile marathon across the width of Flathead Lake.

“We wanted the kids to have a fun end of summer thing to get involved with,” von Jentzen said.

The swimmers will begin Sunday morning at Wayfarer’s Park in Bigfork and land ashore in Lakeside.

While most of the swimmers will be jumping onto safety boats after about a mile, some have shown interest in pushing themselves a bit farther.

“I’ve got one guy who says he’ll do three (miles), but nobody really wanted to do the whole thing yet,” von Jentzen said.

“Somebody might change their mind, and they might think as they’re going along, but we’ll see. It’s just a for fun kind of thing.”

Now heading up the KATS masters program, for adult swimmers, von Jentzen has swam much farther distances. In addition to swimming the length of Flathead Lake, last summer she swam the length of Lake Chelan in Washington, a 50-mile span.

“For me it’s not that much, it’s a lot shorter compared to the rest of the stuff I’ve done,” von Jentzen said.

“This summer I didn’t really do anything long. Instead, I was focusing on getting my speed down and I wanted to get the masters team going.”

She will be monitoring the younger swimmers for the opening stretch, then take off once everyone is in the boats. The team’s end of the year banquet will be held following the swim.

“It’s really just giving them something outside the pool, giving them opportunities to explore the open water a little bit,” von Jentzen said.