With many Ohio Schools being closed until Fall, most of the facilities used for swim team practices and training, including many public pools, will be closed as well. This leaves many teams without a place to prepare for their upcoming season.
The Dresden Swim Center has a
The Pau Hana Swim Team based in Granville coached by Teresa Fightmaster, with team members from Pataskala, Granville, Newark, Heath, Hebron, Zanesville, Nashport, Johnstown, Columbus, Reynoldsburg, and Warsaw, have normally started training this time of year at the Denison University’s McCorkle Aquatic Pavilion. But just like the other swim centers, Denison was closed as well.
Pau Hana was founded in 1968 by the late Jill Harms Griesse who had a deep love for the sport of swimming and at the age of 30 was one of the youngest and only female head coaches in the country coaching an AAU swim team. Jill was also a member of the Olympic Competition Committee responsible for deciding how the Olympic swim camps were conducted and what international competition the teams would participate in.
When Jill passed away in 2014 from Pancreatic Cancer the team carried on in her memory and has since raised over $25,000 for cancer research since 2015. It started as a tribute to Jill, but now honors the friends and family of the Pau Hana “ohana” (Hawaiian for family) who have been affected by cancer. Normally the team hosts a big meet at Denison University and has also participated in Pelotonia (a crowdsourced community fund-raising platform) to raise the funds.
Tri-Valley High School Swimming Coach Christi Holmes couldn’t let the team down by not trying to find a way for them to condition.
Coach Holmes explained, “I approached Dresden pool manager Nick Bice and Mayor Greg Morrison about the possibility of renting the pool for the Pau Hana’s summer training. They were overwhelmingly supportive. The pool was built to competition standards. Lots of equipment was purchased during the build. The pool has 16 starting blocks in the storeroom, backstroke flags for short-course and long-course training/competition, and lane lines. Mayor Morrison even showed me 3 boxes of stopwatches!”
With the deal that coach Holmes had worked out, the Pau Hana team now has a place to train 3 days a week.
Likewise, the Tri-Valley High School Swim Team is able to condition at the Swim Center twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays for a couple of hours in the morning during the pool’s normal lap swimming time just before they open to the general public.
“This is the first time that I’ve had TV swimming together in the summer and so far it’s been great! I’m swimming with the kids,” said Holmes.
Pictured above: Tri-Valley High School Swim Team takes a break from summer conditioning at the Dresden Swim Center to pose at a safe distance for the Buzz. [Matthew Dotson]
