![]() ![]() Then they go to an aquatics pool at Splash in the Boro for their initial diving practice. For the first full weekend of the two-weekend Open Water diving course, which is offered once each month, students first take their book and paper lessons in the classroom at the shop. That unrelated business had its own pool. Southern Dive Center isn't Statesboro's first dive shop. They have made Statesboro their chosen home, and now the home of their business. His dad, the diving instructor and firefighter, grew up in Baxley. The Glenns' son, Parks, just celebrated his first birthday. Until recently she was a stay-at-home mom. We do hope to be able to expand and, you know, maybe hire a couple of college students." Originally from Vidalia, she graduated from Georgia Southern University in 2011 with a business degree in marketing. "It's just the two of us managing and working in the store right now. "It's fully locally owned and operated," said Haley Glenn. The shop is open six days a week, Monday through Saturday. The showroom includes a display for Go-Pro cameras and accessories. There are books on diving and cameras and lights for underwater photography. Brand-new equipment, including scuba sets, with the regulator, gauge, valves and harness, at different price points, as well as masks, snorkels and fins, line the walls of the showroom. ![]() They also have compressor in back to fill tanks. Besides a showroom, the shop now has a classroom. They added not only new paint and floorcoverings, but a couple of new walls. They leased and fixed up the building, which in previous lives was a service station and home to a finance company. But he has a friend in Atlanta who is, and can be called on to make that training available through Southern Dive Center, he said.Īll in the family While Joseph Glenn is on duty as a firefighter, Haley Glenn manages the dive shop. Although Glenn is qualified as a public safety diver, he is not certified to teach emergency response diving. The courses he teaches provide Scuba Divers International, or SDI, recreational diving certifications. He then will work on his certifications in technical diving, he said. The highest recreational diving certification available, he said, this would allow him to teach instructors how to teach. Planning his vacations around diving, he hopes to complete his instructor-trainer certification during two weeks in Key Largo in October. "I've got over 300 students I've certified, from Open Water all the way to dive master," Glenn said. He also led some diving excursions long before the shop opened. The dive shop itself, which opened informally for the first time on Black Friday, went full-time in December. Here in Statesboro, Glenn actually started certifying students about a year ago, working from home on weekends. Certified as a diver in 2006, in started teaching around 2008, he said. Eventually, he was in charge of the Tifton department's dive rescue team. He also worked part-time, for about three years, as manager of a dive shop owned by someone else. While attending Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, he became a firefighter with the Tifton Fire Department, serving about five years. But Glenn has combined diving and firefighting for almost a decade. "Kind of been like a little dream."ĭiving firefighter He has a full-time job as a firefighter with the Statesboro Fire Department, where he has served the past four years. "It's something I've always wanted to do," said Joseph Glenn. But the Southern Dive Center, at 2513 Northside Drive West, is a first-time plunge into owning a business for him and wife Haley. Instructor Joseph Glenn, 28, has been a certified diver since he was 18 and has taught other divers since he was 20. For graduates and already certified divers, frequent excursions such as one to West Palm Beach in March and another into the Georgia Aquarium's big tank in Atlanta on April 8 are planned, as are twice-annual trips to the Florida Keys. A checkout dive at one of northern Florida's freshwater springs is par for the second weekend of the basic Open Water Diving course. With Southern Dive Center, Statesboro not only has a place that sells and rents scuba equipment, but one that offers classes for diving certification and specialties such as wreck diving, night diving and underwater photography. ![]()
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