Open Water Swimming Communities: OWS Facebook Groups
You don’t have to be in the water to feel connected with open water swimming. The worldwide open water swimming community is continually growing, and you can find open water swimmers on nearly every platform. As part of the open water swimming community, we wanted to put together a list of open water swimming Facebook groups to help you connect with other swimmers, groups, regions, and more.
Here are 7 open water swimming groups on Facebook:
Odyssey Open Water Swimmers
We’ll start the list with the group we know best. Odyssey Open Water Swimmers is the community page for Odyssey Open Water Swimming. We created this group for the wonderful athletes and swim enthusiasts who have experienced or would like to experience open water swimming with Odyssey.
Odyssey Open Water Swimmers is a newer group that has been around approximately a year and has grown to include over 200 members so far. The group is private, but is open to all open water swimmers, regardless of if they have yet to participate in an Odyssey swim in the San Francisco Bay or in Berkeley. The group is heavily focused on Odyssey and the San Francisco Bay area, but we do share posts and topics about other news, notes, ideas, and more from the OWS world.
Outdoor Swimming Society 🏊🏽♀️🏊🏻♂️🏊🏻♀️
The Outdoor Swimming Society is a large OWS community that touts having over 70,000 members, making it the largest collection of wild swimmers. The Outdoor Swimming Society Facebook group is a public group with over 41,000 members. To join, you must answer several short questions. The group is full of interesting posts, discussion questions, pictures, stories, and more.
Open Water Swimmers
Open Water Swimmers is a private Facebook group with over 4,300 members who love swimming in the wild. The group has consistent posts, with around 6-10 new posts each day from members. Members are located all around the world.
Open Water Swimming UK
Organized by NOWCA, the Open Water Swimming UK group is dedicated to sharing open water swimming “venues, times, sessions, and coaches so that swimmers are able to find safe places to swim across the UK.” The group also shares other swimming related news and features discussions on nearly anything within the world of open water swimming.
Women in Open Water (WOW)
Women in Open Water (WOW) is a Facebook group dedicated to female open water swimmers “because sometimes it's nice to have a place to chat with the ladies.” The group is open to women open water swimmers of all experience levels.
Canadian Open Water Swimming
Open water swimming is exploding across the world, including with our neighbors to the North in Canada. Mentioned in the about section of the group, “Open Water Swimming is Booming in Canada, with new races popping up across the country, and more people getting involved in this amazing sport.” The Canadian Open Water Swimming Facebook group is dedicated to expanding the sport and supporting the community. The group features posts about the sport, stories, event information, and more.
Slow Swimming
You don’t have to swim fast to enjoy swimming out in the open. Slow Swimming is a “non-profit organisation that campaigns to improve facilities and improve access, to widen the the use of all bodies of water for leisurely and social swimming, dipping, swimbling or swooshing.”