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Hi team,

I wanted to give an update on our pool situation.  Here goes full transparency regarding what I have been dealing with over the past month.  I have been working with the City of Brookhaven Parks and Rec department to navigate this crazy time.  There has been a lot of turnover in that department but it does seem that they have a full time aquatics director who started in March and she really seems to be a good hire.  Her background is in pool maintenance but she inherited an absolute mess.  Even though Fred (from Murphy Candler) and I start the process of making sure our pools will be ready to go in February, here we are.  We were told numerous times that the pool would definitely be ready to go by May 13th, up until about 10 days before practice was supposed to start.  Murphy Candler should be open at some point this week as they were having issues with leaks and electrical problems.  Briarwood keeps getting pushed back due to all the rain over the last month.  If you have driven by, you can see that the entire parking lot needs to be paved so that we can have access to the pool.  The city put out a press release today stating they think it will be the beginning of June and are hoping it might be as soon as June 1st.  In the meantime:

1. We will continue using Lynwood tonight and Wednesday.  Once school is out, I do not think it is a viable option as the number of kids attending practice tends to shoot way up.

2. The City is in the final stages of renting us 8 lanes of pool space at a local private school in Brookhaven that appears to be open for us.  This would get us through all of our practices until June 1st.

3. Some of the extra practices such as Friday mornings and the stroke clinics might still happen at Lynwood as it would be burdonsome to open the rented pool for an hour or two.  

4.  I am trying to see if we can move our 1st home meet on June 4th to Murphy Candler (it is against them).  Even if we are able to be in the pool on June 3rd, I am not sure what is in the swim closet and what we need to buy to run a meet effectively so I think it is a good idea to just proactivly move the meet.

I know this is not ideal and shuffling kids to different pools puts the coaches, the swimmers, the parents, and all of us volunteers in a less than ideal situation, but some things are out of our control.  Luckily the parks and rec department, under the direction of our council person and mayor, really care and are trying to come up with solutions so that we can have a season.  Thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter.  And of course, GO BARRACUDAS!

Michael