ATHLETICS

Student Rec Complex Opens New Aquatic Facilities

Editor’s Note: This summer the University will complete its $50 million Student Recreation Complex expansion and renovation project. The project updates, upgrades and expands the existing facilities with an additional 115,000 square feet of new space, bringing the total size to nearly 300,000 gross square feet – enough space to make Mizzou’s Rec Center one of the ten largest higher education facilities in the nation. MU students voted to increase their fees to pay for the project. Highlights include a 50-meter competitive pool with seating for 1,000, club pool, high-tech fitness club, a heavy-lifting gym and a new climbing and bouldering wall. The following story discusses how Mizzou’s new aquatic facilities will help the swimming and diving teams.

By Steve Walentik

Most of the usual sluggishness was missing from the Mizzou Swim Team’s 5:30 workout on Monday morning.

Believe it or not, the members of the club team, who compete for the University of Missouri swim team in the intercollegiate season, had been eagerly awaiting that particular practice for months.

The reason was simple enough. It was the first time they would work out in the Mizzou Student Recreation Complex’s new 50-meter competitive pool, perhaps the highlight of a $50 million renovation to the university’s student rec center.

“We’d been watching this pool get built from the ground up, so every now and then we’d get to come in it and we’d see progress — the platforms getting built from 1 meter to 10 meters up, watching the water come in, the blocks come in, the timing system come in,” said David Darmitzel, who is heading into his senior season and competes in butterfly and individual medley.

“It’s been really hard for us. We’ve all been really excited about the pool getting opened up, so when practice started at 5:30 in the morning, other than being a little pudgy in the eyelids, we were excited.”

Said junior Amy Charley, a backstroke and breaststroke specialist: “It was amazing. Because all we saw was it being built, and I went home for a couple weeks, so it was so cool just to come back and see the dirt gone and everything painted. I still can’t believe that we’re training in here.”

The new competitive pool, which cost $16 million and was paid for, like the rest of the rec center project, by an increase in student recreation fees, sits on the south side of the complex, where a row of tennis courts used to be. It is a major upgrade over the university’s natatorium, which was built in 1964.

“I had one of my ex-swimmers walk on deck the other day, and she’s like, ‘This does not even seem like it’s Columbia, Missouri,” said MU swim Coach Brian Hoffer, who took over the program in 1992. “It’s that nice. It’s overwhelming. If you were to walk into our old pool and then our new pool, it’s like, wow.”

The most noticeable difference is simply the size. The new competitive pool is 50 meters and eight lanes, whereas the natatorium was 25 yards and six lanes. The new pool has 22 lanes when the bulkheads are adjusted for 25-yard intervals.

There is now a separate diving well with 1- and 2-meter springboards and platforms set at different heights between 1 to 10 meters.

Bleachers line the south side of the pool, and there’s greater deck space to accommodate a large number of competitors in bigger swimming and diving meets, such as the Big 12 Conference Championships next February.

There are also quite a few improvements not nearly so noticeable.

“There’s some really cool things that we talked about from circulation to air quality to making sure that the pool was clear all the time and the chemical system,” Hoffer said. “It’s all the highest tech stuff that’s out there right now. There’s nothing that I felt that they skimped on as far as those kind of important things.”

“We feel extremely confident that it’s going to be a very fast pool because we’ve looked into all those things.”

The planning for the rec center project, which was undertaken primarily by members of the Recreation Services staff, began in 1996, and it started in large part because of students’ suggestions to improve the university’s facilities.

The pool, while serving as the new home of the MU swimming and diving program, is still first and foremost a recreation facility, Hoffer said.

“Individuals who never would have considered going down to the old 1964 natatorium are now engaging with these spaces visually and physically, getting into them,” said Diane Dahlmann, the director of Rec Services at MU.

It is easier for recreational swimmers to use the new facility than the old one because the pool is open for public use whenever the rec center is open. The natatorium was only open for public lap swimming from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday.

But the biggest beneficiaries of the new pool are probably Hoffer and the members of the MU swimming and diving program.

First, it’s a big recruiting tool for Hoffer and his staff.

“It’s going to help us attract more of an elite athlete,” he said. “If you want to train for the Olympics or Olympic Trials or a national meet, a lot of times in the summertime those are long-course meters. We could never do that before. It just allows us to put us on the same plane as the other top programs in the country.”

It will also make coaching the athletes already in the program easier for Hoffer and his staff. The increased space makes it possible for all of MU’s swimmers to work out together. At the natatorium, they had to split up into two workout sessions, which meant Hoffer spent about 34 hours each week just coaching.

With wider lanes and more of them, MU’s swimmers will also get a more efficient workout because they won’t have to worry about slapping hands with teammates as they train in cramped conditions.

The changes put pressure on Hoffer to make the MU program among the Big 12’s elite.

“There’s a lot more pressure and pressure that I want and really have been looking forward to,” said Hoffer, who was an assistant at Arizona State before coming to Missouri. “For me, it’s been a long process because I really like coaching at that level, and I feel I can, and I feel that Missouri can be successful at the very elite level.”

“Now, Missouri’s had 41 years. We’ve had some good years, and we’ve had some rough years, and so we now have to start building some tradition, I think, from scratch at this level. We’ve got a lot to prove.”

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Last Update: November 15, 2007