The pandemic has kept Angela Driscoll out of the pool for the longest period since she started swimming over 40 years ago.
"I just always had a passion for swimming. I did squad all through high school, played water polo in my 20s. And then ... I got into the swim teaching [seven years ago]," she said.
"Even if the [school] teachers aren't ready to go back, I'm ready to go back."
The Queanbeyan-based instructor will be able to access outdoor public swimming pools in NSW from Monday, while ACT swim centres have remained shut.
She is calling for more pools to open in a COVID-safe way as the weather warms. She said it would ensure instructors were kept swim fit, and able to renew their teaching licences.
"I was hoping that they would let us swim laps. The other thing they could easily do is open it up for the instructors and the lifeguards, even if it's not every day," she said.
"We'll just open it for a few hours each day, have a limit, they can even open it to the public and just have a limit of how many people are there."
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Ms Driscoll was also concerned children would miss out on learning basic swim skills because of the pandemic.
She said terms 3 and 4 were the busiest periods for swimming teachers, with many schools requiring students to do two-week lessons for basic swim skills.
"One thing I noticed when my own boys were in primary school, when it comes to swimming carnivals a lot of their friends wouldn't go ... so then I noticed that a lot of children are getting to high school who cannot swim," she said.
This year to September 2021, there was a 20 per cent spike in drownings in Australia.
Ms Driscoll said that might be because people were heading to the beach instead of their local pool.
"The beach is totally different to swimming in the pool," she said.
"We don't want people to say, 'Oh, OK, we'll go to the beach because the pools aren't open'.
"A lot of people think they can just go to another beach [but] most people wouldn't recognise the risks."
The ACT government said there would be a "mid-point review" on October 1, which would consider whether or not to reopen pools.
