The Bloomsburg University pool unexpectedly had to undergo construction that took longer than originally planned. The university had to repair the section of the pool roof that was attached to the Nelson Field House.

     Bridget Hilferty, assistant swim coach for the men and women’s teams, explained that the university just had one HVAC (heating/air conditioning) unit that did not take care of the humidity and air created by the pool what happened was all the chemicals in the pool and all the heat started to eat away at the brick, she said.

     During the repair process, the construction workers encountered more issues than they had originally planned for, thus extending the construction timeline. Since this caused the pool to be down for an extended period of time the Bloomsburg swim team had to go to different pools for their practices.

     While the pool was under construction, Hilferty was asked about BU swim team practice and she explained “we had two practices at the Bloomsburg middle school and one practice at Central Columbia.” Since the university pool was closed due to construction the team had to find other pools to practice in.

     Hilferty said that for the team’s practices they split into three groups. “We had to go down to the Bloomsburg middle school. One practice was 3:00 to 4:15 p.m. and other practices from 4:15 to 5:30 p.m. And then the last group had to go over to the Central Columbia high school and practice from 6:30-8:00 p.m.”

     The surprise did not deter the attitude of the BU swimmers. According to Hilferty, “all the swimmers’ attitudes were fantastic.  We barely had any complaining. They kind of just took it and they ran with it and they worked super hard and we really didn’t hear too much complaining about it.”
When asked about pool usage, Athletic Director Michael McFarland stated, “First and foremost is our swim team for men and women. We have about 60 student athletes who use it on a daily basis.”

     McFarland also explained that the pool is used for many different reasons by a wide variety of groups. This includes everything from life guarding and scuba diving classes to team or community use.

     McFarland had this to say about the progress of the renovation project. “We’re a couple of weeks behind schedule. They hope to be completely finished with the whole project by Thanksgiving.” The team has recently returned to the pool during these final weeks of construction.

     Hilferty summed it all up  by saying, “I am just happy to be back. I think we’re all happy back because we usually do all of our workouts stuff upstairs, so we weren’t able to do it for a while so the project hopefully should be done here at the end of November, early December.”

     Since this was an unplanned budget expense, McFarland had this to say about how it was funded, “The university and other entities on campus obviously pitched in.”

     Today, the Huskies have been hosting meets and practices, the outside of the pool wing of the Nelson Field House is what remains under construction.

      No new information has been given on when the outside of the pool wing will be done.