Bonus Round Friday!

If you've ever wondered what Mr. Coach and his erstwhile English Channel swimmers look and sound like, this is your lucky day!  They're the stars of some NCAA On Campus In Partnership with CBS College Sports TV thing this month.  So have a peek and then say to yourself, "Yup, they sure do like they could use a new pool there."

Dwayne the Pool, Mama, I’m Dwowning!

It’s that time of the year when little things mean a lot.  One of Mr. Coach’s swimmers not too long ago posted on his Facebook page that pre-taper makes him feel like he wakes up with a hangover every day.  Discounting the fact that this particular athlete wouldn’t know a hangover from a hangnail, he does have a point.  During this part of the swim season, the athletes’ bodies are acutely sensitive to any stimulus. 

We recently stumbled upon a new and unintended stimulus.  Owing to an exceptionally dysfunctional relationship with the university’s maintenance staff, Mr. Coach walked into the natatorium a few days ago to find that about a foot of water had been drained out of the pool.  Without warning, the maintenance staff had decided that this was the day they would fix a lane-line anchor they got a repair request for about 18 months ago.  (I am not making this up.)

Well, it was what it was.  Practices had to go on.  But when your shallow end is only three and a half feet deep to begin with, that takes flip-turn precision to a whole new level.  And when they were able to start refilling the pool, that also meant the water temperature was going to drop a bit.  I came by afternoon practice just to see what it looked like.  It was really weird how a different water level affected everything.  The acoustics were different, the air temperature was different, seeing all the pool-length markings that are usually underwater was different.  But, most importantly, the athletes were different, too.

Mr. Coach and I stood there and watched them, doing their warm up.

“I’m thinking this might not be such a bad thing,” he said while we watched the team, chattering giddily as they did their kicking.

“How’s that?” I said as one of the athletes did a turnaround at the wall near us and shouted up, “This is so weird!!!”

“They were really dragging an anchor last practice, which is normal this time of year,” Mr. Coach said, “but now….”

We watched as a bunch of them were jumping up and down in the really shallow end and some of them were repeating flip turns against the really shallow end’s wall.  

“Now they have energy,” he said.  “I might have to do this on purpose in the future.”

Consider yourselves warned, kids.

[Incidentally, the photo up top was taken on this particular day when the university's PR department, with whom Mr. Coach has an equally dysfunctional relationship, decided that they needed to take a publicity photo of some swimmers for a cancer-research fundraiser (notice the pink caps?)  The drained water was about half-way refilled when the photo was taken.]  

How to Save a Pool

So you remember my cousin TJ, right? The one who flings cats into pools to see if they can swim?

Well, he asked me recently if I’d feel comfortable using my blog to publicize a fund-raising event he’s involved with to renovate and re-open a pool in his northern Colorado community. And I said, “Heck, yes! There are days I debate using this blog to sell my children if I thought I could get away with it.” So helping my cousin do something that’s both legal and would benefit his community is a no-brainer.

And, almost even better, is the fact that the way TJ and his Loveland Swim Club compadres are raising money is crazy. Not like a little crazy. Like a lot crazy. They aim to get 3,942 individuals to each swim one length of a 25-yard pool in relay fashion in 24 hours or less (that’s an average split of 21.92 seconds per leg of this erstwhile relay).

Why 3,942? Because in January, 3,941 South Africans did it, and thereby got themselves into the Guinness World Book of Records (TJ’s a little fuzzy on the yards/meters differential, but he says their short-course yards pool fits the criterion). Anyway, if the community of Loveland can get this record back, I think it would do a lot to erase the sting of that 2004 Olympic victory by the South African men’s 400 free relay.

That plus it would help raise money to renovate the Loveland High School pool which has been shut down since 2002 when some authoritative agency deemed it “unsafe” because of its age and condition.

The Loveland High School pool was built in 1965. I would love to walk this authoritative agency through Mr. Coach’s current facility which was built in 1954. This should be its last year because the walls are going up, even as I type, on the new natatorium.

But a few missing tiles, a sinking foundation and a roof that lets in more air (and rain) than the actual ventilation system are no reason -- at least in our town -- to shut down a 55-year-old pool before a new one is built. Heck, there’s this one faculty member’s wife here who was complaining recently that she won’t swim in the current pool because the environment there is “completely toxic.” All of us who use the facility on a regular basis were like, “…and your point would be?”

(Actually I should never complain about people who refuse to swim in the current pool. Less people = more lane space for me.)

But in Loveland, they would probably love (no pun intended) to have too many people in a lane if it means they’ve gotten this particular pool renovated and back up to code. So what can you do to help? Well, if you’re within shouting distance of Loveland, fire up the snowmobile and get yourself over there to swim your length on the weekend of Nov. 6-7 at Mountain View High School’s pool. Conversely, if you’re already snowed in for the winter, then consider making a donation to this worthy cause.

For all the information you will ever need about this event, you can visit Loveland’s Web site. Tell ‘em TJ’s most fabulous cousin sent you.

Incidentally, the photos here were taken in our current facility by Marisa Obuchowski, one of Mr. Coach’s student-athletes, for a photography class. Isn’t it amazing how beautiful crumbling concrete and rusting radiators can look at the right shutter speed?

A New Pool: better living through bulldozing

There are no words more beautiful in a swim-coach family than these: a new pool.

Imbued with the sweet scent of hope that only a UV air-purification system can deliver and able to erase the memory of unidentifiable rashes like a diatomaceous-earth filter, a new pool is a harbinger of better things to come in any swim-coach family.

The swim-coach family will say to themselves, "This is going to be the year that Daddy finally kicks the Singulair habit." Or maybe they’ll say, "This is the year that the guys from the local OSHA office stop calling and asking if there’s anything they can do to help." Or perhaps, "This is the year that the microbiology class stops leaving petri dishes out to collect mold samples from the pool air." Bottom line, a new pool is cause for much rejoicing.

And now my family stands metaphorically perched on the metaphorical starting block of a literal new pool. Way back when Mr. Coach was hired, the university’s game plan had been to build a new pool in 3 to 5 years. Then economic reality hit and, like a seven-year-old in the 25-yard butterfly, the plans for a new pool have plummeted, surfaced and plummeted many times.

But this past year, somebody taught that seven-year-old how to get his hips into it and he finally touched the wall with both hands and the umpteen million dollars needed to get that pool built. My reaction when my husband told me (for the umpteenth time) that the new pool would get built? "I’ll believe it when I see it," I said. (I’m a little bitter about the Singulair bills.)

But earlier this summer, I began to see it. The architect’s plans were unveiled and a name for the new facility was announced. Trees were slaughtered and earth has been getting bulldozed around the new natatorium’s site, destroying the delicate micro-ecosystems where furry groundhogs have shuffled and snuffled for centuries and migrating songbirds have stopped to refresh themselves on thistle seeds and honeysuckle nectar. Soon, the lives of a half-dozen innocent tennis courts will be snuffed out.

And I couldn’t be happier. In fact, I’m thinking of throwing a party to celebrate this senseless carnage of nature and non-revenue-generating sports.

And while Mr. Coach works diligently to explain to the powers-that-be why starting blocks and lane lines are must-haves on his start-up costs list, I have been assembling my own list of must-haves: cushioned, ergonomically-correct seats in the stands (with cupholders), a timing-system control console that you don’t need an engineering degree to understand (for when the work-study students don’t show up and I have to help operate the timing system), refrigerated drink dispensers in the coach’s office, and a wood-fired pizza oven would be nice, too.

I would further request that the new facility get the rights to play a different version of the national anthem before meets, the version that I know Mr. Coach really wants to play: the Jimi Hendrix guitar solo – but it needs to be the studio version, not the live one from Woodstock. No one can accuse Mrs. Coach of being insensitive.