Everyday Hero: 'Get under it' with the Lowcountry Splash
An idea that started 24 years ago has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for causes near and dear to the man who started it and has kept it going.
Mark Rutledge, CEO of Rehab Carolina Physical Therapy, has reason to be excited. Two decades ago, he came up with the idea of the Lowcountry Splash while running the Cooper River Bridge Run.
'I ran the Bridge Run in like 1992 for the first time, and the motto, of course, is 'get over it' and I'm running it, and I'm an old swimmer; I swam in college, and I'm thinking it'd be cool to get under it. So that's where the idea was born, and then we made it happen in 2002,' Rutledge explained.
The splash is a 2.4- or 6-mile swim starting in the Wando River and ending in the Charleston Harbor. It's an annual fan favorite for swimmers.
In its early stages, it was a way for Rutledge to raise money for the neonatal intensive care unit at the Medical University of South Carolina, a foundation in his son Logan's name.
'He was born prematurely. He was born at 24 ½ weeks and was in the neonatal intensive care unit at MUSC. He was doing great. They were actually amazed at how well he had been doing for how early he had been born, and then he got an infection. In two days, he died from heart problems,' Rutledge said. 'So, he lived for a month.'
The Lowcountry Splash made hundreds of thousands of dollars in the early stages, but a trip to Edisto soon directed the dollars to a new cause.
'We were at Edisto visiting friends, and two kids drowned while we were there. We heard the helicopters, we heard the ambulances, and we were all ex-swimmers at South Carolina. We didn't know what was going on. So I started investigating that and found out that South Carolina had the fourth highest drowning rate per capita in the country.'
After discovering this, Rutledge decided to change directions and redirect the money to a program that teaches people how to swim, the Lowcountry Aquatic Program Swimming (LAPS).
LAPS teaches students from kindergarten through first grade in Charleston County.
'We were up to teaching 1,700 kids with free swim lessons of kindergarteners and first graders when we were really at our peak before COVID,' Rutledge said.
COVID killed the program, but Rutledge is working hard to restore it. The fun fact is that in the 23 swims that have been, no one has ever been bitten by a shark.
The splash has raised around $1 million since its inception and will be heading into its 24th race this Saturday.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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