Swim Cats search for a new home

The indoor swimming pool in the basement of Health Sciences has been shut down permanently, leaving the Swim Cats without a practice facility.
The indoor swimming pool was closed over the summer as renovations began on the Health Sciences building. The pool was to re-open once the renovations were complete, but due to a lack of funding, the pool will no longer be in use for any club or organization that wishes to use the pool.
The closing of the indoor swimming pool greatly affects the Swim Cats, the GCSU swimming club, who use the pool to practice after Oct. 1, once the outdoor swimming pool located outside  Centennial Center is closed until the Spring. Tammi Shepherd, president of the Swim Cats, is now scrambling to find an indoor pool once the temperatures go down.
“It gives us no options to swim when it gets too cold,” Shepherd said.
Senior history major Alex Smith shared Shepherd’s sentiment in the loss of their practice facility.
“We were really devastated,” Smith said. “It took me by surprise.”
The announcement came after the Swim Cats held the 2nd annual Bobcat Invitational on Sept. 23, in which the Swim Cats played host to teams including Georgia Tech, Emory University, and the University of Florida. The shutting down of the swimming pool has caused the cancellation of the Duel in the Dungeon swim meet that was to be held in Health Sciences later this year.
“The indoor pool in the basement got a kind of dungeon feel, so we were going to have a theme meet,” Shepherd said.
The problem for the Swim Cats is more long-term, rather than short-term.  The team will still attend other swim meets that do not take place at GCSU.  For practice, Shepherd has brought a solar tarp for the outdoor pool at Centennial Center. The solar tarp covers the pool during days in which the pool is not used for swimming and traps the heat from the sun which when then transmit to the pool, allowing for a warmer pool temperature.  This will allow the Swim Cats to use the pool at Centennial until the end of October.
Shepherd said that there is an indoor swimming pool at Central State Hospital, which is located 20 minutes from the GCSU campus.  However, the pool at Central State is set to a temperature of 85 degrees which is unacceptable for swimming purposes.
Shepherd is in discussions with the project manager at GCSU to find a way to use the outdoor pool at Centennial Center year round.  One possibility is to enclose the pool during the winter months with a giant air dome known as a bubble, or a tent structure which is similar to a bubble except the tent structure has a metal skeleton.  The bubble and the tent structure are temporary enclosures and can be removed for outdoor swimming during the summer.  Another option is to permanently enclose the pool, but Shepherd believes that the university does not have the money for that type of construction.
“We are working on either getting a bubble or tent structure at this point,” said Shepherd.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 13 2006. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry