It may be hard to believe, but this is actually a prime time of year for swim training. Something that, recently, has gotten quite difficult.
That’s because three of the main swimming facilities in the Halifax Regional Municipality are currently closed.
“We do a lot of our programming based out of Centennial Pool, so when they closed for a scheduled shutdown, we relocated to DalPlex and unfortunately this week, we got some difficult news for us on Monday that Dalplex is facing a leak right now for that repair,” said Chris Stone, head coach of the Halifax Trojans.
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Centennial Pool has been closed for much of December due to scheduled maintenance. Dalplex is currently closed to swimmers for repairs and the pool at the Sackville Sports Stadium has been out of operation since October, when fire damaged a part of the building.
“It does make things very difficult, particularly in a Canada Games year,” Stone said.
“We have a number of athletes who are looking to make the team for this summer’s games, so training right now, it’s the ideal time for us to do additional training where the swimmers are out of school and they can really just eat, sleep and swim … so without a pool running a swim team becomes very difficult.”
Swim Nova Scotia says although on paper it may look like there are a lot of swimming facilities in the region, they are all filled to capacity.
“There is limited access to facilities,” said Bette El-Hawary, executive director of Swim Nova Scotia.
“We don’t have enough facilities in HRM to meet the needs of the swimming community. Not only the swim teams, but also for the general public. There’s a lot of members that do aqua fit and other aquatic activities that are also displaced.”
Next June, the Dartmouth Sportsplex will also be closing their doors for renovations, meaning even more swimmers will be left scrambling for pool time.
“We would really like to see HRM and the other levels of government to come together to try to get a large enough facility that does meet the needs of everybody… from the recreational members of the community to the grassroots, learning to swim and also the swim teams,” El-Hawary said.