On The Up: Jillyfish – Napier man fights to keep his late partner’s swimming school dream alive

Sometimes Napier swim school operator Reece Kennedy thinks about the past five years and wonders if they could have been any worse.

There’s been Covid, Cyclone Gabrielle and, as a direct result, such a downturn in business that there were times he thought seriously about closing the doors.

Amidst it all came the passing of partner Jill Seymour.

But Kennedy kept going. After all, Jill’s name is enshrined in that of the Jillyfish Swim School.

There’s also a caricature of her in the entrance just off Austin St, in the Onekawa Industrial District, where he says that, no matter how tough the going gets, there’s always someone worse off.

“This is her dream,” he says, standing beside the three pools they installed as the next stage of their lives in swimming, and the teaching of it.

Reece Kennedy with the caricature of late partner Jill Seymour at the entrance of Jillyfish, the swim school they set up in Napier. Photo / Doug Laing

“I was in a bit of a zombie state, till someone woke me up.”

That someone was business mentor John Hutchinson, a former detective and petrol station proprietor who’s known Kennedy through their common interest in surf lifesaving going back 30 years.

Hutchinson was acting as both a friend – “He’s such a good guy,” Hutchinson says of Kennedy – but also in a volunteer capacity with Business Mentors NZ.

The turnaround at Jillyfish is all about Kennedy, Hutchinson says.

“He did all the work.

“I think what I was able to do was point a different set of eyes.

“Sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees. It’s hard enough when you’re running the business on your own.”

For Kennedy, who “first got in the pool at 4 years old and never left it”, the pathway is about teaching people to swim, or to swim better.

“A lot of New Zealanders [who can’t swim to a competent standard] don’t realise they can’t swim,” he says, constantly aware of New Zealand drowning statistics.

“They haven’t swum for a while. It is a skill easily lost.”

Kennedy had, among other roles, managed council-owned public pools in Hastings.

He says Hutchinson “didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know”.

“But it helped me focus. He said you’re doing the right things, you’ve just got to stay focused. I was pretty close to shutting the doors.”

Before the pandemic, the business had seven staff and more than 600 clients on the books, from toddlers and mums to the oldest, a woman in her 70s who just wanted to swim in a pool while on holiday in the islands, glide up to the poolside bar and toast the moments of relaxation.

The numbers sank to about 300 after the cyclone, as people were unable to get to the pools. Business did not pick up much afterwards.

“You start to get self-doubt about what you’re doing, like why are our numbers not back up,” he says, as he looks forward to the recovery, but appreciating the economic difficulties that others face.

“We’re not there yet. We’re about half what we were before, but we are getting there.”

Then there’s the memory of Jill, and Jillyfish.

It keeps him going, keeps him focused: “This was her dream. Her passion was teaching.”

Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today and has 52 years of journalism experience, 42 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.