The indoor pool has not been filled for the past few weeks due to complications with the pump and leaks found in the pipes. However, the outdoor pool will now be open until Oct. 10 instead of Oct. 1, when it usually closes.
“A lot of students don’t even use the pool that late. It’s mostly the swim team since the indoor pool is broken,” said Ulysses Medrano, a senior lifeguard. “We have our regular swimmers that come from off-campus…The people who complain about it closing early are regulars and that’s because they have a membership that they pay for every summer. As soon as we close the outdoor pool, they’re not allowed to use the indoor pool.”
However, since the outdoor pool does not have an established heating system, it cannot stay open after the weather begins to turn cold.
“I don’t mind guarding it, especially right now when the weather is really nice,” said Patrick Roland, a junior lifeguard. “Once it gets colder, the water is going to be absolutely freezing. Hopefully they can get the [indoor] pool fixed by the time the weather starts cooling down, otherwise it’s going to be pretty miserable out there.”
Pool users echo the desire for the indoor pool to be back in working condition.
“It’s kind of necessary after a certain amount of time when it starts getting cooler out because [students] won’t be wanting to get in it anyway,” said Stephen Culberson, captain of the swim team.
With the outdoor pool closing, questions are raised as to when the indoor pool will be fixed not only for lap swimmers, but also for the swimming and diving teams.
“They keep giving time frames on when they think it’s going to be fixed, but it hasn’t really gone according to plan,” Culberson said. “They haven’t told me anything. I’ve asked around and as far as I know, they’re doing their best to work on it…We would really like to get in there because our first meet is Oct. 11 and it’s not the same distance as the outdoor pool, so we kind of need to be practicing.”
According to Culberson every thing will work out soon.
“Whenever I inquire about it, I’m pretty much told not to worry about it. We really don’t know too much. There’s different types of adversity every year. Assuming we can get back in it fairly soon, we’ll be fine. Even if we can’t, we’ll figure out some way to get through it,” Culberson said.
All maintenance has been done by the engineers from facility services and no non-university employees have been brought in.
“We’ve been fighting with this for three weeks. The main pump went out and they fixed it. Meanwhile, the water had gone down and they knew they had to do work on the pool while the water was down. They drained it all the way down to bring a surveyor in to exact slopes. They spent two days doing that. Then we filled [the pool] and, when we filled it, we found leaks,” said Dan Murphy, aquatics director.
The problem is that the pump cannot be tested until the pool is filled, but the pool cannot be filled until the leaks are fixed.
“We knew the pump was bad, and we thought we had the pump fixed. As far as we know, we do have the pump fixed. We really won’t know how well the pump is fixed until we have the pool filled,” Murphy said.
“Originally we thought the pump was leaking””the pool pump””and through the process we learned that we actually had a leak in the pool,” said Seth Asbury, associate director of athletics for facilities. “Through trial and error we’ve been able to fix the leaks, we’ve been able to fix the pump and now we’re going to get the water back in the pool.”
It appears that the pool is now ready for the swimmers.
“We apologize for the inconvenience; we know it’s affected the recreation swimmers, the varsity swimmers and divers. Fortunately we’ve had the outdoor pool available and it’s still warm, so people have been able to take advantage out there””that’s the beauty of having two pools but it’s up and running now,” Asbury said.
