Big Blue Swim School

We’ve really enjoyed our experience at Big Blue Swim School. The instructors are excellent with the kids, patient, encouraging, and focused on helping them become confident swimmers. It’s great to see the progress they make from lesson to lesson. Highly recommend!

Mr Eric did a great job with Alexander and Adriana’s first swim lesson at 430p today thanks all !

Do not go here. We use to have a good experience. We had friendly staff and good trainers. The manager is a young girl that has zero experience with conflict resolution. She will double down even if she has absolutely no idea what she is talking about. She talks very unprofessional with phrases such as "anyways". As you would expect from a kid that has zero management experience. The older gentleman manager that was there was easier to talk to and got things resolved as he indeed had the management and maturity to deal with conflict resolution. She called me today to tell me she will not be giving us our missed classes because we are no longer enrolled. We unenrolled because we wanted to catch up on his missed classes because to no fault of our own they had no available make up classes or instructors to make them up. I’m beginning to think the issues there are much deeper and that is the reason they can’t have proper trainers. I will be reaching out to my credit card company to get this resolved because like I said she will double down and be of zero assistance and will be completely rude. They will not have classes and assure you that you will get to use your make ups then they expire and double down that we can’t get those make ups because they expired. They are good at taking your money that’s for sure.

The positive aspect is the facility in Sterling is clean and most of the coaches are really good. In my kids case, especially coach Sahil lacks empathy. You have to make the kid listen to you rather than giving commands. It happened at least 3 times and my kid follows if you talk nicely and wouldn't move an inch if you insist. Pointing towards the kid in the rest of the group makes it seem as if the five-year-old has committed a crime. There was another coach who was chatting with her colleague, and I didn't want to upset her by reminding her to do her job. The owner of this facility should teach the coaches how to be compassionate towards the kids. Finding a makeup slot is really hard, especially if it is after 5 PM any time on a weekday. While Aqua Tots doesn't charge registration fees, Bigblue introduced this fee. The other issue is, you would suddenly notice that the kid cleared a criterion from 0 to 100% in one go. I never see a gradual increase(from 10,20, 30,50 or 80%) with his progress. Try to avoid Coach Sahil if your kid is as sensitive as mine. My kid cried and doesn't want to be coached with him.

The Big Blue Swim School at Dulles Plaza in Ashburn has a nice facility and most of the instructors are friendly and supportive. The pool area is clean and the classes are generally well organized. However, the evaluation process for moving kids to the next level needs improvement. During my son’s class time, Nico is the observer responsible for evaluating students and deciding whether they are ready to progress. Unfortunately, it seems like she is the only observer for multiple classes at that time, which makes it difficult for her to manage everything effectively. There have been instances where instructors were calling for an evaluation, but she didn’t notice or wasn’t aware. Because of this, the progress evaluation process feels inconsistent and delayed, which is frustrating for parents and kids who may already be ready for the next level. The facility and instructors are good overall, but the evaluation system needs better coordination and staffing.