Ah, supply and demand.
With schools still closed until at least July 1 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, local swim clubs were stuck looking for other ways to get in the water.
Franklin Parks and Recreation, meanwhile, had a 50-meter outdoor pool that was sitting around unused.
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“We were more thinking of, how we can we rent the pool to outside, people having parties,” parks and recreation director Chip Orner said. “I got a random phone call from somebody that asked about Center Grove Aquatic Club (CGAC) using our pool, and I thought, ‘Hmmm — all right. It does meet the guidelines.’
“We can’t open a water park; we don’t have those features open. (But) we can open a community pool that’s less than 50 percent.”
Before giving Center Grove the go-ahead, Orner reached out to the Franklin Regional Swim Team, figuring that the club in town should have first dibs. FRST club director Zach DeWitt, whose senior group had just started working out at a smaller pool in Martinsville, jumped at the opportunity, as did both Center Grove and the Greenwood Gators.
The Franklin pool is currently being used 12 hours a day through the month of June, with each of those three clubs renting it out in four-hour blocks. Indian Creek Aquatic Club, meanwhile, is trekking down to Seymour since nothing closer was available.
Even that, though, is better than the nothing the clubs had access to between March and May — a stretch that could have seriously threatened their overall viability had it stretched out any longer.
Swim clubs rely on athlete dues and revenue from hosting meets for survival, and there was no such income through the spring. DeWitt was fortunate enough to get some short-term relief for FRST through the Payroll Protection Program passed by Congress — which enabled him to continue paying his coaches through the spring — but even with that infusion of money, the club was severely impacted both by the shutdown and the cancellation of this summer’s long-course meets.
“PPP was definitely a shot in the arm and allowed us to stay afloat,” DeWitt said, “but we’re in kind of lean times, if you will, due to the fact that we lose three meets this summer — and generally speaking, our summer meets are quite a bit more lucrative than our short-course meets, just because we’re one of the few places that has a 50-meter (pool). It’ll probably affect us for a year.”
Amy Spencer, the senior age group coach at CGAC, said that her club had had some surplus money tucked away for an emergency, and those funds helped serve as a bridge through the shutdown period.
She added that Center Grove hadn’t planned on getting back into the water until schools re-open in July — the coaches had called every area pool from the University of Indianapolis to Pioneer Park in Mooresville and “were pretty much getting a no from everybody” until things came together in Franklin.
CGAC slapped together its plans for which groups would practice and when in just one day and had everyone ready to start up on June 1.
“I was a little hesitant because of the short notice,” Spencer said, “but it’s actually been a real smooth transition.”
For Greenwood, being stuck with the midday block (11 a.m. to 3 p.m.) in between Franklin and Center Grove isn’t necessarily ideal, but Gators head coach Ray Onisko had reminded swimmers and their families in advance that with limited pool space available, beggars can’t be choosers.
“One of the things we told everybody was that you’re going to have to be flexible,” Onisko said. “Once we find pool space, it could be midday, it could be late night, it could be early morning; you’re going to have to be flexible. It could be 6 a.m. one day, it could be 5 p.m. the next day. So we prepared everybody well in advance that this was not going to be normal by any stretch of the imagination.”
Regardless of where and when the water is available, swimmers were just eager to have the sport back in their lives after more than two and a half months of dry-land conditioning.
The fact that they could return to an outdoor setting while their home pools in the high schools remain closed was an added bonus.
“They love the fact that a) we’re back, and b) we’re outside,” Onisko said. “During the summer, we always try to get outside at least three times a week just to try to break up the monotony of looking at the same building, the same black line. Plus, it’s summer — they want the sun. They want to be outside.”
When club teams will actually be able to start competing again in meets, and what those meets will look like, is yet to be determined. Indiana Swimming has been allowing meets to be tentatively scheduled or rescheduled for as early as July 13, and there has been talk of running “virtual meets” where each club would swim at its own pool but compete against others. Nothing concrete has been decided just yet, however.
In the meantime, teams are just happy to be back in the water where they belong, doing something. Even if it’s not quite the old normal, it’s a far better situation than the one they were in a month ago.
“We’ve tried our best to make this as comparable of a facility as what we’re used to having,” DeWitt said. “It’s not quite there, but it’s about as close as we can get.”
