Calphin Swim Academy

About

Calphin Swim Academy, located at 6175 Dublin Blvd, Dublin, CA, is a prominent swim school offering year-round programs for all ages, from infants to adults. They specialize in learn-to-swim classes, stroke improvement, competitive swim training, and private lessons. The facility typically features indoor, heated swimming pools designed for optimal comfort and learning. Calphin emphasizes a structured curriculum with certified instructors, focusing on safety, technique, and fostering a love for swimming.

Calphin Swim Academy maintains its indoor pools at a comfortable temperature, typically around 86-88°F (30-31°C), to ensure a pleasant and conducive learning environment for swimmers of all ages, especially for young children and infants.

What are people saying (AI review summary)? Calphin Swim Academy elicits highly mixed reviews. Many parents highly recommend it, praising significant improvements in their children's swimming skills, including overcoming fear of water, developing strong techniques, and building confidence, discipline, and resilience. Positive experiences often highlight friendly staff and coaches, a supportive environment, and opportunities for competitive swimming. However, a substantial number of parents describe it as the 'worst' swim school, citing issues such as children being kept in the same level for extended periods without clear progress tracking, frequent instructor changes, and generic 'cookie-cutter' classes. Criticisms also include a 'joke' assessment system, a chaotic enrollment process, higher costs for less instruction time, and predatory policies regarding refunds and make-up classes. Furthermore, some reviews point to unhelpful and unfriendly coaches (aside from front desk staff), small facilities, and a significant lack of support and accessibility for special needs children, particularly concerning changing room policies.

Location

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Amenities

• Accepts Credit Cards
• Accessible Entrance

Reviews

Listing Reviews

August 2nd, 2025

Lindsay Li

Both of my kids have been going to Calphin since we moved to Dublin 1 year ago and their swimming skills have definitely improved a lot. Especially my 4yo daughter who was terrified of getting her head into the water can now confidently swim for 10 ft all smiling. Super friendly teachers and staff (Nancy is awesome!) Highly recommend!

August 16th, 2025

Avanti M

The best swim school in the area! After exploring several swim schools in the Dublin and San Ramon area, I enrolled my now 7 & 9 year old kids at 'Calphin Swim Academy' (dublin) about 4 years ago—and couldn’t be happier with that decision. My goal wasn’t just for them to make it from one end of the pool to the other, but to truly develop lifelong, strong swim techniques. That’s exactly what Calphin offers. As a former state swimmer myself, I know firsthand how swimming builds discipline, teamwork, and resilience—skills that extend far beyond the pool. It also played a key role in improving my asthma, something I’ve seen benefit my son as well. Swimming truly strengthens breathing and overall health. I wholeheartedly recommend Calphin Swim Academy to anyone looking for their children to gain real swimming skills that last a lifetime. Thanks Calphin!

August 17th, 2025

W K

Great swim academy. My daughter started at pre-bubbler and reached elite/grad level at the Dublin facility. She was not confident in the water when she first started, but the safe environment and moral support she received over the years from her coaches made a difference. Her coaches motivated her, gave her confidence, and provided an extra nudge when she needed to refine and improve her stroke techniques (particularly breaststroke and butterfly), to the point where her breaststroke is her strongest stroke. Calphin’s annual summer swim meet also paved a way for her to experience a competitive swimming environment, which also gave her confidence and motivation to pursue swimming as an athletic sport. She now swims competitively and is working to further improve her times in the water to eventually participate in her high school swim team. We highly recommend this swim school!

April 3rd, 2025

sundeep t

Calphin swim academy is the worst swim school by far. Believe me, we have tried many other swim schools like american swim academy, happy fish, private lessons. Each of them have their pros and cons but none as bad as calphin. Here is why - 1. Calphin claims they are much more strict than other swim schools and keeps your kid in the same level for years citing some minor nitpick reasons. While I can accept that they could be more strict, what is unacceptable is that they do not have a system to track/communicate the progress of each kid and where they need to improve. The instructor keeps changing every 3 months and the new person has no idea as well as to where the kid needs to improve. Their classes are just cookie cutter which make all kids do same things, and not tailored to each kid's strenghts/weaknesses. They make 10 year old kids swim with paddles like toddlers even when the kids can swim very well without them. 2. Their assessment system is a joke. Swimming is continuous learning that you master individual skills in each class to move to next level. Calphin has one day designated for testing in a quarter where they test some random subjective criteria to fail the kid. Other places like ASA, happy fish assess the kids continually and have a chart/book to track each kid's progress in every class and communicate with their parents 3. Their enrolling system is a bigger joke. They have the test scheduled at end of the quarter, that determines what to enroll in for the next quarter. By the time you get the results and decide to enroll, your current timeslot is already full and you have to enroll a different day of the week and different instructor. Its just a random mess that you cannot plan your life around 4. Calphin is more expensive for the time spent in the pool and have the worse ratio and worse instruction, compared to other swim schools. Its hard to believe this crappy swim school still continues to be in business. Only good thing it has going for it is the convenient location. I hope they close this unethical and scammy business down

June 7th, 2024

J J

One of the least special needs friendly places I’ve been to in a long time. I’m a working parent and I have just enough time to pick up my kid from school and change him in the changing room before his class. He’s seven and cannot change himself, but signs were posted banning me from changing him in the girls’. There is one single stall handicap restroom for changing children of the opposite gender who are older than four that is literally always full before and after his class. When we used the showers on the pool deck to rinse off (as indicated by their sign) we were told “these are actually the coaches showers” so we needed to hurry along. The general feeling they communicated was that they don’t care about my child, and they will do the bare minimum to meet his needs as legally required but they feel it is a great inconvenience to them. Outside of special needs, the coaches are unfriendly (shouting, grumpy, unkind such that my younger son did not want to go back to class after the first few sessions), the pools are tiny, and the locker rooms are very small. Their policies are borderline predatory, with no refunds given ever, and no make up classes offered (unlike MANY other swim schools in the area). The only thing positive I can say is the front desk staff were always friendly.