Aquatic Center opens, meets with approval

By Kurt Esposito
Assistant Campus Editor

With a ceremonial dive from the associate director of the Division of Recreational Sports, the new Aquatic Center officially opened at 11:30 a.m. Monday.

The $17.1 million facility took two years to complete, is adjacent to the Recreational Sports Center and is located on the site of the former outdoor pool. The center can be accessed through two corridors from the sports center.

It has two pools — a 500,000 gallon diving tank and an 800,000-gallon competition pool.

Even though the diving tank was closed, the competition pool was open with one of the bulkheads dividing the pool into two sections — one with lanes running vertically and the other with lanes running horizontally.

After diving in, David Fraseur, the associate director, said the water was good and not too cold. After that, the pool became officially open to the public and about 15 people tried it out within the first half hour of its opening.

One of the first people in the pool, Martha Chiscon, professor emeritus of biological sciences, began by doing laps. "So far so good," she said of her swim.

She said the pool has wider lanes than the old pool located in the sports center and is much cleaner. "There is no comparison," she said. "I think everyone's going to love it. We've waited a long time; a long, long, long, long time."

Stefanie Kohl, sophomore in the School of Science, was also one of the inaugural swimmers. She said the new facility is clean with plenty of space in the lanes to swim.

"I think it's great. It's a really nice facility," she said.

The pool will be used by the Division of Recreational Sports as well as the department of health, kinesiology and leisure studies and the swimming and diving teams.

Gui Rego, co-captain of the swim team, said the competition pool is 10,000 times better than the one in Lambert which was formerly used by the swim teams for competition. "It's one of the best pools I've ever been to. It's really nice," he said.

He said the swim team has been looking forward to using the pool for a long time.

Head men's swimming coach Dan Ross was on hand to test the pool and baptize it with water from the pool in Lambert.

Rego said the new pool will be effective in recruiting for the swimming and diving teams.

When used in competition, the bulkheads in the pool will be moved to give eight 50-meter lanes. The diving tank offers four springboards and five diving platforms ranging in height from one meter to 10 meters. While the diving platforms will be off-limits to the public, the two one-meter and three-meter springboards will be open.

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Aquatic Center opens, meets with approval

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CAMPUS DESK PHONE:
(765) 743-1111 ext. 253

Campus editor: Laura Pelner

Assistant campus editors: Kurt Esposito, Dave Stephens

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