Competitive swimmers say they’re facing pool problems

In March, ABC-7 brought you a story about El Paso’s competitive swimmers and their fear of losing out on places to train.

With the competition pool at Ascarate Park closed for maintenance, some swimmers worried they wouldn’t be able to work on their breaststroke.

Three months later competitive swimmers are now facing the reality of what they are up against.

“Stressed …like major stressed. We got several athletes that are ready to compete on the junior national and national level, we got several athletes that are at state level and regional level,” said Leanne Carr, head coach for the Aqua Posse swim team.

She says now that the Ascarate pool is closed for maintenance, city officials have stepped in to help allow the teams to train at the Pavo Real pool but since there is close to 500 swimmers, the pool has to be divided in half and swimmers are losing out on proper competitive training.

“Their competition is training is in a 50-meter pool ..and our kids are training in a yards format which is half of what they need,” Carr said.

For those not familiar with swimming, imagine a high school football team training for a state championship and only using half of the field to practice, and the issues don’t stop there.

“We have over 500 that are in the USA Border Swimming Association and they are being required to swim at one pool. They are having to share that time,” Ecklyn Salazar.

Salazar is a parent of a young swimmer who’s ready to compete on a state level.

“He is disappointed that he is not able to train in a facility. In a 50-meter pool, like he needs too in order to be competitive on a state level and he is concerned that he is not going to be able to be competitive because of that,” Salazar said.

For some aquatic athletes the stakes are higher than a medal.

“For some of these kids it’s their ticket to go to college, for some of these kids it may be their only ticket to go to college,” Carr said.

Others have even opted to leave town.

“They look around at all the practices they were not able to have or how much space we are not able to get and they are like we are so grateful you got our kids to this level they are now but we need to go where they can swim and have plenty of practice time,” Carr said.

El Paso County approved $776,000 for the Ascarate Pool maintenance project. The public works department said the Ascarate Pool might have not made it through the season without the updates.

One of the problems they ran into was the filter system. The department said it is so old that replacement parts aren’t available so custom parts must be made.