Nya Snell
Senior Anye Diaz prepares to begin a heat versus Hayward on March 14th.
The Encinal pool houses both the water polo as well as the swim team, however, the Jets aren’t the only ones using it. Recently, Encinal has had to switch up their swim team schedule to accommodate for the other teams needing to practice there, same thing for water polo, which is seasoned in the fall. The other schools that are currently using the Encinal pool are Alameda High as well as Saint Joseph Notre Dame High School. With both of these teams being mandated to Encinal’s pool, it has become more difficult for their swim team to get the practice needed. This is definitely a setback for the Alameda swim community, causing confusion and inconvenience for both coaches and swimmers.
“I think that’s really not efficient because there are so many different club teams and high school teams that have to use the pool at the same time,” said Hanna Hosmer, Sophomore and Varsity swimmer at Encinal, “and there are a bunch of different teams.”
Hosmer states the complicity of the situation and gives a brief description of how inefficient it is. To follow Hosmer’s thoughts, Freshman Dylan Berger shares more details about sharing a pool with Alameda High.
“I know that Alameda currently doesn’t have a pool,” Berger states, “so their sports practice is here. Especially when I was playing water polo, you definitely notice [that] with Alameda coming in after, your practices get cut short, you have to share the locker room, it’s just very different when you have two teams in a pool that pushes some practices from 7 to 9 instead of right after school, affecting student athletes.”
Berger gives further information on who he knows practices at Encinal and why he thinks it’s the first choice.
“Alameda practices at our school, Gators practices at our school, the Alameda Neptunes Water Polo Club, and that’s all that I know of,” Berger continues. “And then there’s some lifeguard camps and everything. Franklin [pool] from my experience, seeing it, it’s a small pool so we use this instead because we have about 7-8 usable lanes, it’s just a lot bigger, and the other pools on the island are just not as nice.”
Encinal Swim Team’s coach, Amelia McDonald, extends by sharing her thoughts and knowledge on this subject, being a trustworthy source as a longtime coach.
“I don’t mind sharing pools when there’s a necessity,” Coach McDonald said. “[Encinal’s Pool] is the only competitive school in Alameda. Currently, you have Alameda High, Encinal High, and Saint Joe’s, those are the high schools that practice here. You also have two masters teams who practice here.”
Being a coach, McDonald has more experience with the scheduling around practice times, she gives her insight and difficulties on it.
“It’s a classic case of supply and demand,” said Coach Amelia, as swimmers on the team call her, “there’s a lot of demand and not enough supply and so you have some students like, Saint Joes has been practicing and has to practice in the morning, Alameda High practices all the way up until like 8 o’ clock at night. We don’t get the choice to do the mornings like we used to and are pushed into one spot so nobody really benefits from having access to the pool.”
Overall, it’s a difficult situation with so many teams in Alameda needing a pool to practice in without getting the accommodations they all really need. As expressed, it’s definitely a disadvantage and disruption for Alameda teams compared to other high schools. However, teams have been able to push through and succeed given their circumstances, and will continue to do so as time goes on until more pools are established.