Photo Credit: City of Henderson Department of Public Works, Parks and Recreation
Why does the swim team get the entire pool? Why is the synchronized swimming class always held first thing in the morning? Why do we need so many lanes for lap swimming when we have a world-class water polo team? If you operate a competition-style pool with multiple lap lanes and diverse programming capabilities, these types of questions probably sound familiar. The challenges associated with this dilemma can be daunting, particularly if a community places a high value on the many benefits of aquatic facilities.
The city of Henderson, Nev., has three year-round “competition” pools, ranging from 10 to 20 lanes each, with depths from 4 to 13 feet. Two of these pools have diving boards, one is Olympic-sized and certified for competition by USA Swimming with a bulkhead that allows for 25-meter or 50-meter options, and one is more of a novice facility with 10 lanes. The city—and by association the parks and recreation department—is fortunate to have a passionate aquatic user base composed of lap swimmers, water-walkers, high-impact aerobics classes, competitive swim and water polo teams, diving clubs, and scuba-diving instruction. These programs, in addition to city programs—learn-to-swim, novice swimming, synchronized swimming, and special events--are all competing for the same space. Thus, the obvious quandary is, “Who gets what, when, and where?” Until recently, the answers were left to some semblance of chance and variable reasoning. Sometimes the lanes were allocated to the “hot, new program,” sometimes to the “been swimming here forever program,” and sometimes to the “it just feels right” program. As our community and facility demand continued to grow, it became apparent that this particular approach wasn’t going to be sustainable, and it was doing more harm than good. After some discussion, the management of the city’s aquatic section only had to look as far as its own department to solve the majority of these issues.
Classifying Users
We realized our center wasn’t the only game in town that had high demand for a limited number of facilities. The city’s sports section had been working from, and consistently evaluating and improving, a comprehensive field-allocation policy for years, which formed the ground work for how aquatics could prioritize its lap-lane allocations and programs. The concept itself is fairly simple and divides all participants and programs into one of five user groups. These groups are classified in order of service preference, based upon the city’s Public Works, Parks and Recreation Department policy, and service models, and may vary depending upon the organization. But the lesson to be learned as a first step is to fully encapsulate the facility’s users and programs to determine how their use best benefits the organization.