Competitive swimmers say they’re facing pool problems

in march we 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 breastroke. three months later competitive swimmers are still facing the same issues. abc-7’s jerry najera is live with the story … rick estela i spoke to swimming coaches –i spoke with parents and all of them expressed their frustration with the competion pool situation here in town. some parents even deciding to leave the city –in efforts to give their kids the best training available. “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.” leanne carr is head coach for the aqua posse swim team. she says now that the ascarate pool run by the county is closed for maintenance city officials have stepped in to help allowing the teams to train at the pavo real pool but since there’s close to 5 hundred swimmers it has to divided in half and swimmers are losing out on proper traing facilities. “thei competition is traing in a 50 meter pool getting what they need and our kids are training in a yards format which is half of what they need” fo those not familiar with swimming –imagine a highschool football team trainning for a state championship and only using half the field to practice. –it doesn’t stop there “we have over 50 hundred 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 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 concerened that he is not going to be able to be competive because of that” fo some aquatic athletes the stakes are higher than a medal “fo 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” others have even opted to leave town. “they look around at all th 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 the level they are now but we need to go were they can swin and have plenty of practice time” el paso county approved $776 thousand dollars for the ascarate pool maintenance project. the public works department have said the ascarate pool might not make it through the season without the work. and one of the problems they ran into was the filter system is so old — that replacement parts aren’t available any more — so custom parts must be made.