SANDPOINT — Bonner County youngster Joe Neff pulled double duty during this year’s annual Long Bridge Swim.

Neff, a 9-year-old Farmin Stidwell student, swam the 1.76-mile course and dove for submerged litter.

“It’s what keeps him interested,” said Neff’s mother, Emily.

Thankfully, there wasn’t much litter to scoop up. Although he fished just two cans from Lake Pend Oreille, his efforts did not go unnoticed by event organizers.

“I was quite impressed when I heard of this 9-year-old boy diving down and picking up garbage from the lake bottom! He was the last one out of the water — but certainly performed an impressive task while he was swimming,” said Donnavan Leavitt, the Long Bridge Swim’s safety coordinator.

“I was tired afterward,” Joe Neff said of the swim, which took them two hours and 36 minutes to complete.

“For us, it wasn’t really a race,” Emily Neff said.

Nevertheless, Joe Neff finished first because he was the only competitor in his age category.

“He actually won first place,” Emily Neff said.

Joe Neff reports seeing fish during the swim and relayed the location of a vehicle bumper in the lake to race officials, who passed the information to a sheriff’s deputy who was working at the event.

The Neffs swam the race two years ago, but Joe Neff was only 6 years old at the time and only made it about halfway.

“He’s been swimming forever,” Emily Neff said.

Joe Neff also has a knack for scaling poles and trees. He has also been known to “run” underwater by toting a rock.

“It was hard to bounce (up) to get air,” he said.