What would swim team do without pool? Sink

The Poplar Bluff High School girls swim team may have a big hurdle this winter in defending their SEMO Conference title — finding a pool to practice in.

City leaders, like the school and every other entity during the coronavirus pandemic, are facing a budget shortfall. The Poplar Bluff City Council will be looking at options to dig out of a $283,000 deficit, as reported earlier this week.

Among those options, the city could close the fitness center and indoor pool at the Black River Coliseum.

If that were to happen, the Mules swim teams will eventually go under.

Poplar Bluff High School is scheduled to have a boys swim team start practice in August with the girls set to follow in November. Athletic Director Kent Keith said he would do whatever he could to make sure the swimmers will be able to compete this school year.

“We don’t want to pull the rug out from under them,” he added.

Swimmers are the only athletes at the high school that must pay to play, since they must have a membership at the Coliseum to practice. The school also pays to rent the pool for home meets.

That is also the case for summer and winter swim clubs that practice and compete there. The pool also hosts training for lifeguards and scuba diving, low-impact workouts for seniors and swimmers of all ages.

“Just a shame for it to go away,” said Beth Lewis-Muse, who coaches the Mules girls swim team and the summer Piranhas.

"It’s taking so much opportunity away from the youth in this community.”

Poplar Bluff’s girls have finished in the top 21 at state in each of the last five years and claimed the program’s second conference title this past winter. Paige Bradley earned the program’s first all-state medal in diving by finishing sixth even though there’s not a diving board at the Coliseum.

Not having a pool would be much tougher.

The boys program was suspended due to a lack of a coach after the sport moved to the crowded fall season for the 2006-07 school year. Lewis-Muse, who also coaches cross country in the fall and track in the spring, took over as girls coach.

Poplar Bluff added the sport during the 2002-03 school year and this will be the third season back in the pool for the boys.

While the boys team could practice at the outdoor R.W. Huntington Pool, they could not host a meet. It would take extensive (and expensive) construction to make that possible and even more to use during the winter.

The school spends about 1.5% of a $56.5 million budget on athletics, which does generate some revenue, but is not in a position to add costs.

Of course, the city wouldn’t be in its position had the use tax measure not been defeated by about 50 votes in the most recent election. Instead, the tax that citizens are already paying when they purchase something on the internet cannot be used here.

If voters were again sending city leaders a message (and that’s a whole different argument for the opinion page), it was at the worst possible time. Budgets are being busted up from here to Jefferson City and Washington DC.

A swimming pool may not be a big-picture item to fret over compared to funding first responders or fixing infrastructure, but it does have an impact.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 10 people die every day in the United States from non-boating related drownings.

Growing up in St. Louis, swimming was part of gym class during my junior high education. Without an on-campus pool it’s nearly impossible to require Poplar Bluff students to learn the one sport that could save their life.

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Brian Rosener is the sports editor of the Daily American Republic.