Sara Michael, The Examiner
2008-01-02 08:00:00.0
Current rank: # 798 of 13,778

BALTIMORE -

When Michael Lazris and his teammates are not sharing the lap lanes with other swimmers at Columbia Association’s pools, they are traveling to Montgomery in the early-morning hours to swim at a rented indoor pool.

Howard County, the swimmers say, needs an Olympic-size, 50-meter, indoor swimming pool.

“It would be so much easier,” said Lazris, 15, who swims with the CA’s Columbia Clippers team.

“You have some top-level swimmers at our club [who] need access to a 50-meter pool,” said Ellicott City resident Jody Frey, whose two children also swim with the Columbia Clippers.

Surrounding counties, including Anne Arundel and Montgomery, have public indoor pools, but the indoor pool at Howard Community College is inadequate, Diane Goodridge, an Ellicott City parent of competitive swimmers, told Howard County Executive Ken Ulman at a recent public hearing on the fiscal 2009 budget.

The HCC pool has only six lanes and is 25 yards long, according to the college’s Web site.

Without proper facilities, high school students can’t form swim teams and compete against neighboring counties, swim coach Mike Jacobson said.

The demand is there, he said, and a facility also could serve scuba-diving classes, water polo, synchronized swimming and triathlon trainers.

“As soon as you build one of these pools you better put one on the books every three years, because everyone will want to go there,” Jacobson said.

Goodridge and other pool advocates said Howard’s plans for a 25-yard indoor pool at the North Laurel recreation center not only was an inconvenient location for the rest of the county but wasn’t large enough.

Howard recently created an authority, which has been asked to study the best place for a pool and the costs to the county, Ulman said. Some counties rely on a revenue authority to run the swimming pools.

However, building an indoor pool would require Howard to create an aquatics division with its own staff in the Department of Recreation and Parks, said Director Gary Arthur.

Roger Carter Recreation Center in Ellicott City has a county-operated outdoor pool. The Columbia Association operates nearly two dozen pools, most outdoor.

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