Center Grove to join exclusive club with new pool

<p>Center Grove has been making a push in recent years to provide its students with some of the best athletic and fitness facilities in the state.</p><p>The latest is a new $17,585,000 Olympic-size swimming pool being added as part of its upcoming high school expansion.</p><p>In the past three years, Center Grove has made a $1.5 million upgrade to its football stadium, put $10 million toward a new weight room and fieldhouse and almost $800,000 toward an artificial turf surface for the soccer field.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]<p>The pool project, which is expected to be completed in April of 2021, will cost more than all of those projects combined and include a 50-meter pool (172 feet by 75 feet), a zero-entry therapy pool, locker rooms, public restrooms, concessions and upper-level seating for 1,100 spectators.</p><p>For Center Grove swimming coach Jim Todd, the upgrade is long overdue.</p><p>“When they built this pool in 1995, I asked for a 50-meter pool then, and they didn’t put one in,” he said. “So it’s been a long time coming.”</p><p>Currently, 11 high schools in Indiana have 50-meter pools on campus: Ben Davis, Brownsburg, Carmel, Castle, Fishers, Franklin, Hamilton Southeastern, Lake Central, Munster, North Central and Pike.</p><p>A handful of other schools compete in community aquatic centers off campus, with Elkhart and Westfield set to join that group in the near future. Westfield schools recently committed to putting $15 million toward an Olympic-size pool that will be housed inside a new YMCA building but used by school teams.</p><p>Many of the schools with on-campus Olympic pools also perennially rank among the top finishers at the girls and boys state swim meets. Todd didn’t mention that when making his push at the Nov. 15 school board meeting where plans were approved.</p><p>At that meeting, Todd said that he would like to be able to teach basic water safety to every student in the district. He notes that right now, swimming lessons can’t even be offered during the school swim season because there isn’t any space or time available with high school and middle school practices eating it all up.</p><p>“This pool is utilized so much from October to March that we can’t get (younger kids) in without making it an unsafe area for them,” Todd explained.</p><p>Of course, the competitive advantage is a benefit, Todd said.</p><p>“Our Center Grove Aquatic Club team, if you ever came to a practice where we have 20 kids in every lane, it’s not conducive to being able to get kids better,” he said. “So if we could spread out over 26 lanes and have three or four kids, five kids in a lane at a time, those kids are going to be able to be that much better quicker.”</p><p>The addition of a second 50-meter pool in Johnson County could also provide another local venue for hosting major competitions. Franklin, currently the lone county school with such a facility, has hosted the IHSAA boys and girls sectional meets since 2008.</p><p>Though most of the current high school swimmers will never get a chance to use the new pool, Todd says that the level of excitement from the younger swimmers in the community, as well as their parents, is quite high.</p><p>“It will definitely benefit everybody,” Todd said. “Hopefully the elementary schools can utilize it; the whole community. Not just the swim club — open it up to the community a little bit more often.”</p>