Half-inch-short swimming pool in Virginia Beach will be fixed

VIRGINIA BEACH

For want of a half-inch, 10 national records were lost.

Now, the swimming pool that spawned that controversy is about to grow.

It will take five weeks and $29,900, but when the work is done, the pool at the Princess Anne Recreation Center will be up to snuff. The city will close the pool to start construction about March 10. The pool is expected to reopen about April 14.

The controversy began in February 2003 after a state high school championship swim meet at the rec center. Ten national records were set and 28 swimmers qualified as All-Americans.

That made some people suspicious, so they measured the pool. It came up short.

The pool is supposed to be 25 meters long. But it was not built with state championship regulations in mind, so precision was not crucial, City Engineer John W. Herzke said at the time.

Measurements were taken at various times, under varying conditions, but all came up short. Final measurements showed one lane short by a half-inch, another short by 3/16ths of an inch.

As a result, the Virginia High School League struck down the 10 records and the 28 All-American performances.

“Every inch a person swims is critical when you’re measuring in hundredths of a second,’’ an official with the National Interscholastic Swimming Coaches Association said.

For a while, Virginia Beach considered fixing the pool. Instead, the city used the pool at the Bayside Recreation Center for all swim meets. That pool, a virtual twin of the one at Princess Anne, is exactly 25 meters.

The pool at the Great Neck Recreation Center is not an option, said Teri Dalone, the city’s aquatic coordinator. While the Great Neck pool is nearly identical to the one at Bayside, only some of its lanes are certified for length.

At first, using only the Bayside pool worked. As the number of swim meets and number of swimmers grew, the pool became overused, Dalone said. For each meet, the pool had to be closed to the general public.

The Bayside pool is one of only three statewide used for Virginia High School League championships in the AAA group, for the high schools with the most students. Other cities are reluctant to host such large meets, said Tom Dolan, VHSL’s assistant director.

Virginia Beach officials “are the greatest at getting the most out of marginal facilities,” Dolan said. “They are the very rare exception to the rule.”

Early last year, Virginia Beach officials agreed to relieve Bayside by fixing the Princess Anne pool. The wall at the shallow end of all eight lanes will be moved slightly.

When the work is done, swim meets will alternate between Bayside and Princess Anne, which are at opposite ends of Virginia Beach. The Princess Anne center has more parking and is closer to the Oceanfront, Dalone said.

The city is not considering fixing any more pools, she added.

Meanwhile, league officials have not found any more too-short swimming pools. “That was an anomaly,” Dolan said, “a once-in-a-blue-moon type of thing.”

Marc Davis, (757) 222-5131, marc.davis@pilotonline.com