By Sophia Krasny News Reporter
The soon-to-be-named Goldthorpe Athletic Center will have a new space for athletes to train, recover, and compete: the Lloyd Aquatic Center. In approximately three weeks, Mercersburg Academy will greet family and alumni with a ‘soft opening’ of the new pool. In essence, this means the Mercersburg community will be able to access this space, but it will not yet be open to athletic use.
The Lloyd Aquatic Center boasts state-of-the-art water-treatment, ventilation, and air-handling technologies in addition to an Olympic size pool. Head swim coach, Glenn Neufeld ensures that “better air and water quality will be beneficial to everyone that uses the facility, whether it be for recreation, training, competition or rehab work”.
Aside from logistics, Bryce Mitchell ’21 expressed her excitement for the opportunities the new pool will give swimmers; she said, “This facility will prepare us for meets because we can train not only for short courses [25 yards], but also long courses [50 meters]. I think this change will bring the Mercersburg swimming program to the next level.”
The Lloyd Aquatic Center will also allow the swim team to expand their numbers. “I’m most excited for what the training space will allow in the future. We will be able to have a bigger team, and I am always ecstatic for more swimmers to come. This environment will only improve our team culture, since we really are a family,” said Kierston Donnelly ’21.
Although the new aquatic center will become the new home of the Blue Storm swim team, all athletic programs will benefit from its opening, expected at the start of the winter term. Athletic Director Rick Hendrickson said, “The Lloyd Aquatic Center gives us the capability to run as many as three different athletic activities/practices and countless other ways for the community to use the pool. We can run diving practice, swim practice, and have another team in the north end [the shallow end] for a water workout. In fact, wrestling and indoor track have already planned aquatic workouts! Makes sense, with a 12-1 resistance ratio. Our SAC [Student Activities Committee], MOE [outdoor education], and Summer Programs will all use the pool for programming as well, extensively in fact.”
Looking towards the future, the athletic department expects the new aquatic facilities to expand its abilities to host meets, perhaps even the prestigious Eastern Interscholastic Swimming and Diving Championship (more commonly known as ‘Easterns’), as well as sharing the space with the greater community; these in turn will help with the costs of maintaining this new space.
The opening of the aquatic center will also mark the beginning of an athletic center reorganization. Hendrickson said, “Mercersburg has a campus master plan for facilities and a review of that master plan is upcoming. Part of the review will include future plans for what is now the Flanagan Pool and, potentially, other spaces.”
Dylan Gantt ’21 encapsulates the future effects of the Lloyd Aquatic Center perfectly: “The new pool will change the face of Mercersburg as a re-emerging swimming program to a new height in its long and successful career.”