By: Grace-May Hansen
“We need a pool!” Senior and varsity Waterpolo team captain James Cooper said. “It’s about time. We don’t have a pool, we’ve never had a pool, it’s right there, an open field.”
Since the establishment of San Marin in 1967, its campus has been missing something. While it has a football field and track, softball field, basketball courts, baseball field, and tennis court, there has yet to be the addition of a pool. This leaves San Marin’s Waterpolo and Swim teams unconsidered, and the athletes feel that a pool would greatly benefit their team environment. Junior Lexie Fox is part of the girls varsity swim team, and she believes that a pool would have an enormously positive impact on the aquatic teams.
“It would benefit everyone on the swim team and create a better team environment,” Fox said.
Lately, students and staff are discussing uses for the ample upper campus field space, which has no current purpose. San Marin Athletic Director Tyler Peterson explained that the school is “hoping to turf” the upper campus field with money from the current bond for sports facilities. Peterson desires for it to be used as “practice field space” for soccer and lacrosse athletes. Despite these intentions, he explained that Principal Jennifer Larson and himself are working to determine viable plans for an on campus aquatic facility.
“Our next steps are to meet with the district, whether it is with this bond or in the future, it’s going to take time, but it is something that we are going to work towards”, Peterson said.
As a former member of San Marin’s swim team, Principal Larson feels that it “would be wonderful if San Marin had an on-campus pool”. However, the construction of an on-campus pool would require generous financial support from sports boosters and the Novato community.
“Financially, we would have to have a lot of community support in order for it to be a possibility. They would have to determine if that is a priority,” Larson said.
Due to the absence of an on-campus pool at San Marin, Swim and Water Polo athletes have to commute across town to Novato High for practice, where they share the pool with Novato’s swim and water polo teams. Athletes find this commute inconvenient and wish for a home base. Fox hopes that athletes at both Novato high and San Marin can have greater flexibility.
“Having our own pool would increase our flexibility, since we use the Novato High pool we have to share it with Novato teams and alternate between us and them having home meets, so if we had our own pool we would be able to have a better schedule,” Fox said.
Aquatic athletes feel that an on-campus pool would also increase the amount of students that join the swim and water polo teams.
“It would promote swimming, since we have to go all the way to Novato high. It discourages people from joining the water polo or swim team because it’s such a far commute,” Fox said.
Fox wants the best for San Marin aquatics and hopes to see the teams flourish in the coming years.
“I hope that future San Marin students have the opportunity to swim with the comfort and convenience of their own pool,” Fox said.
