Goldfish Swim School - Needham - Needham, Massachusetts

Nanah Crosby

My son has been thriving in his swim class. He absolutely enjoys it. The swim teachers are great. Very patient. I picked goldfish because of their flexibility in the swim lesson hours. I wasn’t able to make my sons lessons at the YMCA due to my work hours, so I took him out and found goldfish. So happy I did.

Anna Skeele

Both my kids have been swimming at Goldfish for a few years. Their swim skills have grown exponentially with the kind guidance of their swim instructors. Goldfish is well organized and operated. They are super helpful in finding class times that work with our schedule, their lifeguards are well trained and professional, and their classes are structured to build swimmers’ skills naturally and with confidence. My kids love it!

Sahar Zaheer

Tried the jump start clinics this summer and a fabulous deal for the cost per session and focused attention from expert coaches. We were also able get an adaptive swim clinic for another child and was very impressed with their list of accommodations.

Facility is extremely clean and well organized; staff focuses a lot on water safety and do well with a range of children. I appreciate the pool is very well staffed and lots of supervision!

Konul Ibrahimova

After two years of swimming lessons, my son still had a phobia of swimming, and I felt nothing had been achieved. I had enough and decided to stop his classes there. I then enrolled him in a different program, and within one month, he was able to swim, jump into the water, and even swim backwards. I do not recommend the Goldfish!

Olga Ramiro Ban

We love Goldfish Needham ! All three of our kids take classes and we cannt say enough on how great is the team - attentive, flexible, knowledgeable. Communication is a key and they have nailed it.
Thank you from our little fishes.

Steven LeMay

The staff are super-friendly and helpful. The instructors in the pool show genuine interest with their students and celebrate their progress! There is a lot of positive energy.

Kate Swenson, Realtor

Goldfish Needham does a great job getting to know the kids and meeting them at the level they are at. We have had a great experience learning to swim here!

Erica Clem

I’ll start with the positives: The facility is great and pool is warm. My kids (5 and 3) got comfortable in the water and had fun at lessons. They also learned to put their face under water. The management and customer service is great.

Cons: in my experience there was very little consistency. Teachers were often absent and there were always subs. In turn, this means the teacher never knew what my kids could or couldn’t do! Also, my kids take a while to warm up to people so sometimes my 3 year old would spend the whole lesson crying because it wasn’t a teacher he knew. There was also rarely the same kids in a lesson. Sometimes there would be 2 kids (which was awesome) whereas other times there were 4.

While my kids got comfortable and enjoyed the water at goldfish, that was the progress they made (which is definitely step 1). They also learned to put their face under water. However, they certainly did not learn to swim here after many lessons. The teachers held on to them all the time and didn’t have them take risks. I started my 5 year old somewhere else and she’s swimming independently after a few lessons. At goldfish there was no independence. Maybe it’s because there were always different teachers and they didn’t know what the kids were working on?

I expressed my concerns to management and they were very responsive and helpful.

Overall, I recommend goldfish for getting comfortable with the water. My goal was for my kids (especially my 5 year old) yo be comfortable, to learn how to be safe in the water , and swim independently. This was not accomplished at goldfish for us.