By Tessa Nacke
Chipped paint, rusted hooks, broken cages.
This isn’t a horror movie, it’s Fountain Valley High School’s (FVHS) pool.
With residue, buildup, uneven swim lines and jaw-dropping injury stories, the current pool is an ongoing frustration to the athletes, and many struggle to find solutions.
“I have come across an injury with a cage,” Megan Lundquist, a senior on girls’ varsity water polo, said.
Due to the weight of the cage (a water polo term for goal), Lunquist actually lost a toenail from dropping the cage on her foot.
“Because of how old our cages are…It looks like it’s about to fall out…it’s just very sketchy, [wondering] whether today is the day it breaks or not,” Lundquist said.
FVHS has two pools: a 12-foot-deep pool for water polo and a shallow four-foot pool for swim.
Neither of these pools meet the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards. This oversight could end up in multiple fines, costing the school a minimum of $4,000 in statutory damages.
Beside the fact that these pools do not comply to the ADA standards, they also do not fit all the athletes.
“We have to modify practices heavily to make sure that we can get in corrected plays and all that practice in,” Kyle Adama, the head water polo coach, said.
All teams must try to adjust accordingly to the small pool.
“Having all the JV and all the varsity in the pool at once can get pretty crowded [because] the dive pool is not big enough to play water polo in. We can hardly squeeze half-court drill scenarios in,” Josh Merrill, a junior on boys’ varsity water polo said.
All of these modifications in teams’ practice lead to a different experience in games. The water polo teams are at a constant disadvantage from practicing in a smaller space than they actually compete in.
But, even with all these handicaps, boys’ water polo qualified for the first round of CIF for the first time since 2015.
The pool doesn’t just affect water polo; it affects the swim team as well.
“The pool is really shallow,” senior Peyton Sherwood said. “So diving is really difficult unless you really know how to do it because you have to [make sure] you don’t crash into the floor.”
Sherwood is a member of the FVHS varsity swim team, a team that faces challenges with the pool daily.
“Because of the pool, I have actually gotten a concussion because the lines weren’t lined up properly. I’ve hit my head on the wall, and I hit someone else as well. And I’ve cut my hand on the lane lines,” Sherwood said, recounting her experiences with the pool.
Thankfully, hope is on the horizon.
“Our current status is [that] our remodel will take place as soon as Marina High School (MHS) finishes,” Principal Paul Lopez said.
The previous plan was to have MHS and FVHS remodel their pools at the same time, but there were insufficient funds to tackle that kind of project.
“I’ve never believed construction when they give you the date they are going to finish. It’s never going to be that day… It always runs a little bit late,” Lopez said.
The problem with the pool remodel is timing, Lopez says. FVHS is full of many different working pieces, and planning construction around all the activities is difficult.
“I always tell our director of maintenance, I need to know the timeline,” Lopez said. “We might need to move our swim team to another site… Where are we going to stage all this heavy equipment?… I want to make sure we have a good plan in place.”
