Last year, I was under the impression that the new pool was happening, no doubt, but now I have sensed a little waffling on the reality of the whole thing or at least the time line. Is anybody jacked into the privileged info at Mercersburg? It’s not a deal-breaker, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be the official Mercersburg swimming person having to address a bunch of questions from prospective applicants and their annoying parents, so I would never push it with a coach or AO, but I sure would like to know for my own self.
I only know that a new pool is planned. The old one is apparently near the end of its life. I don’t know the timeline, however, and my kids don’t swim so I am not privy to any other news. The new field house just opened, and that had to be done before the pool project.
I can revise that: estimated groundbreaking 2017-18.
@twinsmama Excellent…Thanks so much. That’s exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. Sounds like they are pretty much on plan, then.
While @twinsmama is certainly the font of all knowledge re: Mercersberg, don’t be afraid to ask these questions of the school. Particularly if they’ve mentioned a new pool in a capital plan, they should expect questions as to when, how many lanes, what type of timers, etc.
I did ask, and when the answer seemed a little forced and decidedly non-specific, I did not want to push the subject and make it appear that we were the sort of people who were shopping for schools based on their luxuries. We are, but I don’t like to come off as gauche. Getting the some info on a forum such as this saves everybody the hassle of being pushy at the wrong time. And by everybody, I mean me.
And the planned pool, announced a couple of year ago now, was/is a true 50m long course pool with a bulkhead and all the trimmings–certainly a real step up from even the finest NE boarding school facilities. That’s not a minor project.
Remember that if it happens while you’re there, there may be one year when you’ll have to travel to swim if it’s replacing the current pool in the same location. Sounds like it’s a reasonable price to pay for such a facility…
I think the new pool is in addition to the old one. And I don’t think there’s anywhere else local to swim. I don’t know much more but it was mentioned casually at the open house.
It would be easier that way, for sure! Preferable to tearing down and replacing the existing facility…
Yes, I think the old pool will go bye-bye after the new one is built. I can’t remember what will be in its space; there was a presentation about it last year and it all sounded wonderful, but I didn’t store the information in long-term memory. 
Makes sense actually, due to costs of running two facilities. I got the idea when I was there that they (only?) want top, national type swimmers.
I was also under the impression that the current pool would stay till after any new pool was 100% operational. Perhaps that is where some of the misunderstanding or what could be taken as equivocation is originating.
Regardless, it all sounds good to me.
I’m not sure Mercersburg will only take the best national-class swimmers at all times. I don’t believe they want to be a school like Baylor in TN or Bolles in FL. They want excellent swimmers who can do the work. The very best swimmers will never go to a school like Mercersburg or Peddie or Deerfield or wherever: too much school work and too many other distractions. There are indeed very fast swimmers in the prep leagues, and those kids usually pretty gosh darn smart and hard workers all around, but the times tend to drop off pretty quickly once you get to third or fourth place at even the best dual meets. We have kids on our team, not a national-caliber Olympic feeder program by any stretch, and we have way more than a couple of kids who would make the consols or better at the prep leagues’ championship meets in 6th or 7th grade. Now certainly not all those kids are good fits for boarding or day schools in those leagues, but they can swim well enough.
Think about the timing though. Doesn’t a nice 50M Olympic aquatic facility take a couple years to build? I’m not sure any of our children will get to swim in it much unless they are breaking ground this year.
I’ve been through the new pool thing a few times, and the only rule is: you will never get to swim in the new pool. They are never built. Never in time for you to use them. Even at your house. If you haven’t started digging the hole, you will move before you ever get around to swimming in the pool you have said you will build for the last week or decade.
Obviously, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but.
If they are serious about building a new pool and start the construction process this calendar year, the incoming freshman in 2017 should be ready to swim in it for the fall of 2019. However, if it goes into calendar 2018 with no hole in the ground, I would expect that even the class of 2021 will never see any new pool in person until they come back for a fifth reunion.
I guess we will see.
I know one school that started teardown of an existing facility (pool and fieldhouse) the day winter sports ended. The spring of that year and the subsequent school year was construction. By pre-season of the next year, the new facility was completed. It was an enormous project, and one that must have involved incredible planning, but the swimmers were without their pool for only one season. I felt bad for the kids that graduated during the construction year. They were the class that paid the price and didn’t get to enjoy the result.
I will respectfully disagree with the notion that Peddie will not attract the very best swimmers because of how much school work or other distractions there are. Being able to swim year-round at Peddie is a huge selling point for those great swimmers who excel both in and out of the pool. I do agree that schools like Deerfield, Exeter and Andover are at a disadvantage since not only is the academic workload intense, but their student athletes are required to be involved in other sports during the fall/spring and thus cannot continue to swim year-round as many have done in prior years.
I think we’re talking about diffent things, @BigBlueSwim Peddie doesn’t have the very best swimmers now. The very best swimmers, especially ones not at all otherwise suited to rigorous academic work and other aspects of boarding school life, don’t swim at Peddie or any other school and never leave their club coaches or ever swim in high school at all. Peddie continues to have the reputation of attracting (many of) the top PREP swimmers. And the best swimmers in that cohort are very good, some future national team members, D1 stars, and so on.
But the best swimmers at schools like Deerfield and Exeter and others, those kids are not always chumps compared to their peers at Peddie or Mercersburg.
And if a prospective school doesn’t offer fall and/or spring swimming through the school or a USA swimming program on campus, ask the coach how often the off-season swimmers in other sports are working out in the pool. In my experience that often depends on the individual coach and/or the current group of swimmers and not so much on the school policy. But as always, ymmv. (Much probably also depends on where you are going to be for LC season and how competitive you want/need to be right away in June.)
Agreed…my kiddo is no chump as I compare results for Peddie and Mercersburg and she swims at one of the schools mentioned. She very much looks forward to trying water polo and her chance of burnout is hopefully lowered as a result of a lesser grind. She will return to LC in the summer and practices at her club when she’s home. She does not expect nor desire to swim at a large D1 school although her times would possibly put her in contention. She doesn’t want a job and values the academic experience as much as the athletic one.
It’s easy enough to go online and look at meet results for prep school, public school, and regular D-1 meets. One of the nice things about timed sports is that the results need none of the interpretation stats from other sports do.
You can do this yourself to see how competitive any kid would be at any school. Overall, many of the prep schools have comparable swimmers. But few would be contributors at a D1 school like Pitt. Or even at some D3 programs. Then again, I suspect that most BS swimmers are at BS in search of balance, which a life dedicated to that level of swimming does not provide.
Exactly. Balance is key and the successful prep students need to be well-rounded. Anyone who knows wicked fast swimmers knows a few who are absolute mutton-heads and would be miserable at a rigorous private school.
And not all prep swimmers peak in high school. Some indeed do go from merely really fast to exploding at the next level because reasons and understand what they’re getting into. Courses/horses. It’s all good.