Well done Jade!

For most of us, splashing around in the water for an hour is usually plenty, leaving us pretty tired.

So imagine for a moment what Country Day School student Jade Scognamillo had to endure Friday night and most of Saturday as she successfully completed her swim of Lake Ontario. Her time in the water amounted to a little less than 20 hours. Even the written accounts that have been published are hard pressed to describe what roughly the last 90 minutes of the adventure must have been like, with waves and swells in excess of five feet just outside the break wall at the Toronto waterfront. And then there's the cold, the exhaustion, the disorientation of swimming in the dark, etc.

"I've never been so happy to see the sun in my life," she commented shortly after coming out of the water.

Who could blame her.

It's hard to keep in mind that this is a 15-year-old girl. It certainly did not take her long to develop an abundance of courage. How many people reading this would have had the guts to attempt something like swimming across one of the Great Lakes? We would submit probably not many.

And don't forget, she conquered Lake Erie last year.

And another thing we have to keep in mind is Jade was doing all of this for a cause, namely to raise $35,000 to buy an incubator for the Neonatal Unit at the Hospital for Sick Children. Another mission accomplished.

There are some people who say negative things about the young. And to be sure, a lot of kids today still have a lot of growing up to do, as is usually the case with that age group. Jade probably has some personal growth to experience in the days to come, but she spent the weekend demonstrating she's got a pretty good head start on a lot of other teens; in such forms as abundant courage, strong social conscience and a gritty determination to overcome obstacles to reach a goal. Don't under estimate what it must be like to swim through five-foot swells for more than an hour. That takes lots of determination.

People with those qualities almost always do well. For that matter, Jade's done pretty well so far.