Sophia Goldberg sports editor
The well-known Swim Gym floor has appeared in various movies, such as It’s a Wonderful Life, Whatever It Takes and It Happened One Christmas. However, the archaic mechanisms that allow the basketball court to open into the pool have failed several times within the last year, forcing various athletic teams to adapt practice and game schedules.
The swim team has yet been unable to practice in the pool, a serious detriment to preparation for upcoming swim meets. Instead, the team has been exercising on the upper basketball courts and around the track.
The team has had to cancel a meet scheduled for Wednesday, March 7, and move the home meet against Torrance High School on Friday, March 9, to the Torrance pool. Coach Shadi Eghbali has been disappointed by the inability for her players to practice.
Senior Judy Masutani echoes her coach’s concerns, saying that even the more experienced swimmers on the team do not feel ready to compete.
“We have a lot of swimmers who have never swam competitively. A lot of these swimmers don’t know how to swim legally and are very unprepared,” Masutani said. “Even the more experienced swimmers feel unprepared and out of shape.”
Boys’ swim captain Max Dodd comments on the loss to Torrance last Friday, mostly due to the lack of a pool to practice in before the meet.
“So far, we have had a slow start to the season because of us not having a pool. We lost pretty bad [to Torrance] because of the lack of practice, but we are hopeful that our team can pull through and have a successful season,” Dodd said.
Eghbali fears that the swimmers’ lack of practice has caused issues with scheduling events and will be costly in the team’s ability to succeed.
“The problem is that the swimmers haven’t gotten into a pool. We don’t know who is swimming which events and who can swim what. Scheduling is super difficult,” Eghbali said. “Keeping kids out of the water makes it really difficult and is useless for swimming. No matter how much dryland you do, you can’t be a swimmer with just dryland. You have to be in the water.”
Maintenance did not respond to interview requests on this matter.