Displaced athletes cannot wait for Aquarena's long-running renovations to wrap up next spring
Pool user groups doing their best in the meantime
Twenty-three of the province's top swimmers stretch on the tiled deck of the Memorial University pool deck before diving in for a practice, their strokes measured out in yards.
While swimming distances have long been measured in metres — with 25 being the standard pool size, and 50 the length of Olympic-sized pools — when the university began construction of its physical education building in the late 1950s, the swimming world was all about the yard.
"We are training in yards and our racing is metres," said Duffy Earle, Memorial University's swim team co-head coach.
"We have to convert that to times and splits and try to equate it to a 25-metre pool, so there is math. A lot more math."
Swimmer, divers and artistic swimmers have long availed of the eight-lane Aquarena, which is 65 metres long and has a deep end of nearly five metres. Built for the 1977 Canada Summer Games, the Aquarena has to be ready for the 2025 games, which be held in St. John's.
The Aquarena is across the street from MUN's old pool, and has been closed for critical months of the young athletes' training schedules.
In February, the university announced that a planned one-year closure for Aquarena upgrades had turned into two — a setback to people who use Newfoundland and Labrador's largest aquatics centre.
The prolonged shutdown is taking a toll on user groups.
"Instead of carrying a team of 36 like we did last season that the Aquarena was open, we are down to 23 swimmers," said Earle.
That means when the team travels, they're one of the smaller teams among their Atlantic Canadian university counterparts.
Not ideal training conditions
Across town, at the St. John's-owned and operated Paul Reynolds Community Centre, the Edge diving team holds a dry-land training session.
The club, run by Jose Palma, is thankful for the city's space, but says it is not ideal.
"We have just two spring boards at one metre each," Palma said. "Divers need a three-metre springboard…five-metre, seven-metre and a 10-metre platform."
Palma, originally from Valera, Venezuela, came to the diving club about three years ago and started to see growth in the club.
"Everything was great," he said.
"We have this situation and the numbers go down"
The team had started to see success with one of its divers, Palma's son, Juan Diego, winning a gold medal at the 2023 Junior National Diving Festival — the first gold medal win for an N.L. diver in 20 years, according to Palma.
However, there are no platforms for Palma to use and in order to find a three-metre springboard for practise, the team shifted to the outdoor Bowring Park pool during the summer.
"That's what I miss, the towers," said Juan Diego.
'A rough two years'
Shannon Driscoll bangs a metal hook against the metal of the ladder used to climb out of the pool to help her artistic swimmers keep time under water.
The long-time swimmer turned coach is used to holding the Sea Stars Artistic Swimming club's practices in the MUN pool but before the Aquarena closure they used to have access the deepest part of that pool as well
"It's been a rough two years," she said.
"I will say all the facilities have been very good, helping us try to make it work."
The team now splits its time between Memorial University and the aging, soon-to-be replaced Mews Centre pool.
Neither is as wide as the Aquarena and nowhere as deep.
"They safely cannot train all the routines right now because of that," Driscoll said.
"They cannot do them in the shallow end for concussion risks for just hitting the bottom...That has been the biggest struggle."
Disrupted schedules
Driscoll, her coaching staff and parent volunteers, like club president Rebecca Bobby, now have to plan a lot more to make sure they get all the practices in.
"Another year of juggling schedules of being between two pools," Bobby said. "All the times of practice changing again, then changing again -- [it] can be hard on the head sometimes to keep all that straight."
Memorial University, which is the lead on the Aquarena upgrade project, recently released photos of the work going on under the angled roof.
Work on the renovation, with a global project budget (tax included) of $24.59 million, is closing in on completing the first phase of the work needed to get it Canada Games ready.
Jordan Wright, Memorial's lead on the 2025 Canada Games, said there have been major structural, mechanical and electrical upgrades.
This includes improvements to the duct work, new lights and the base of the spectator seating. Scaffolding seen in photos released last winter is now down.
"A lot of the work right now is focused on resurfacing the pool," said Wright. "Hydroblasting is just taking place [and] we've got grinding work happening over there right now that will be followed up soon with sort of patch repairs, some epoxy works, some painting."
Wright is hopeful that the pool will be ready to be filled in the new year. "We're thinking toward the end of January or sometime in February," he said. "Thereafter we're able to start commissioning systems in the building."
Unexpected findings
The project has not come without challenges with contractors uncovering a few unexpected things.
"There was a bit more work required on the structure of the facility than what was expected," he said. "We've also had some code changes in electrical and other elements of the building."
Wright said that a consultant has been hired to figure out what work needs to be done right away to get the building ready for the 2025 Canada Games, and what can wait until after.
Still, he remains confident the Aquarena will be ready. "We're looking at the end of May 2025 for substantial completion."
Word has been splashing around swimming circles is that organizers of the games have booked a backup pool in Halifax — Dalhousie University's DalPlex — but both Wright and a spokesperson for the Nova Scotia pool dismissed it.
Artistic swimmers, divers, and competitive and recreational swimmers are all hopeful the project stays on track.
"We've been recruiting for next year, telling people 'it's going to be open, it's going to be open,'" said Earle. "I hope we're right."
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