pool sessions and historical agreements

[Cathal]

Someone said it to me recently about pool sessions and what the agreements are, so I thought I'd better put it down here..

Back in the mists of time when there was a 33.1m pool in the PESS building, ULKC had the three end-of-day sessions Tue/Wed/Thu.
When the Arena was built and the pool in the PESS was decomissioned, the same three hours were transferred over to the new pool, in part due to the recognition of the contribution that the student body had made in cash towards the building of the new facilities. All of the clubs that were using the PESS facilities were accommodated in the new building, though some of the clubs have since declined in numbers and been unable to take use of the times they were given, and those hours returned to Arena allocations.

So, from day 1, we had our exclusive 3 hours per week in the new pool, ours to do with as we see fit. Over the years, we have donated (temporarily and Alan agrees with this temporary state of affairs) time and space to other clubs that were not facilitated by the move of facilities - sub-aqua lost the diving pool and didn't have an equivalent place, the Swim club were not formed at the time the Arena opened first. Some clubs have lost their allotted times due to the club being wound down - en example being Waterpolo, who had half of the pool on two of our nights, and we got their slots..

Alan's thoughts on the sharing of the pool is that we will get the exclusive access to the full 50m for our three hours, and those that we currently share with are going to be moved over to the 25m when it is onstream, so there will be much less contention in the 50m and we will have more room to e.g. set up polo goals every night and still have enough space to teach and learn the flatwater stuff.

I wouldn't be making too many noises officially anyway about asking for use of the 25m as we would likely get charged for that - especially when more lifeguards would have to be on duty to cover our use - where we get free use of the 50m at all of our times. Maybe for the first really busy sessions we might be able to buy usage. Not having to share the 50 is better than getting the use of the 25, and chances are that any time we are in the 50 there will be someone else in the 25.

[StephenODea]

Thanks for this Cathal. Big help.
So do you think having the 50 m pool 3 nights and sub aqua and swimming sharing the 25m Pool is an achievable outcome?
If not, i cant see why having the 50m on Tuesdays and sub aqua in the 25m would be an issue.

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[Conor Lowe]

I could see and issue with asking the swimmers to move to a smaller pool for sure.

[GavinSheehan]

Yeah I'd say swim wouldn't take too kindly to moving to a 25m when they have the 50m now even if it is only out of courtesy.

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[StephenODea]

Anyone know anybody involved in sub aqua?

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[OisinHiggins]

Yeah SteveO I'm involved. Why?

[Cathal]

I don't see why subaqua would have any problem with the 25m pool, if anything it'll be lots more useful given the significantly greater depth present in the 25m pool.

Swim club, it'll just mean learning tumble turns.

The hours in the 50m are ours alone and always have been. We have been generous enough to allow the swimmers to use a portion of the pool when we were also using it. They will now have the benefit of exclusive use of the 25, and more lanes to work with differing swim speeds, so it should be a win for them too, even though the length is half of what they were accustomed to.