By Greg Grisolano

news@joplinglobe.com

With more than 200 children in her care every day during the summer, Morgan Ramsey takes lots of field trips to keep them entertained.

“We’re basically a traveling camp,” said Ramsey, director of Youth and Family Services for the Joplin Family Y. “We go to a lot of different places over the summer.”

Trips include Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield and the municipal pools in Joplin. But one place she said they haven’t gone is the Swimmin’ Hole, a private water park outside Joplin in Newton County.

“I have never been there personally, to check it out,” she said. “And I don’t send my staff and my kids anywhere that I haven’t been.”

When it comes to taking her charges swimming, checking out a destination beforehand is one of the rules that Ramsey and other groups follow. They say they use a buddy

system, make sure they have the appropriate number of trained chaperones, and in some cases, test the children’s swimming abilities.

Some of these rules they apply to any field trip, whether water is involved or not.

It was a “lack of supervision” that resulted in the accidental drowning on July 17 of Ethan Cory, of Joplin, according to Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland.

Cory’s body was pulled out of five feet of water — the shallow end of a pool that sloped to a depth of 12 feet at the private water park. Cory, who was just less than 4-feet tall, was part of a group of 34 children ages 5 to 7 from the Boys and Girls Club of Southwest Missouri in Joplin who were on a field trip at the Swimmin’ Hole.

“This young boy had zero supervision,” said Copeland, and he criticized everyone from the lifeguards to the chaperones who accompanied Cory and the other children.

Copeland said four chaperones with the club were stationed at different areas in the water park, but the investigation determined that the children were not assigned to a specific chaperone, nor were they assigned to a “buddy system” with other children.

“This child and the other 33 who were with him were allowed to run at will and do what they wanted to do,” he said.