When Scott Affeld, father of Park swimmer Zach Affeldt, looked over the upcoming proposals for the school board, he was inspired to create a Facebook group to push for the improvement of the aquatics facilities at Park schools.

Affeldt said he and another Park aquatics family member started the facebook group together.  

“I started (Pool for Park) with a friend of mine, Ryan McGary, trying to gauge interest from families in SLP with students in aquatics,” Affeldt said. “(We wanted) to kind of understand whether there was any community support for doing renovation of the aquatics facilities.”

Affeldt said the idea came about after looking through proposals for an upcoming referendum from the school board.

“We both lamented the fact that nowhere in any of the proposals was there any mention about doing anything with either the pool at the middle school or the pool at the high school,” Affeldt said.

Synchro swimmer junior Brooklyn Donaldson said the pools underwent minor repairs, but many issues with the quality of the facilities still remain.

“They are making some changes that health-wise need to be made, but there still are somethings that are slipping through the cracks that have been there forever,” Donaldson said.

Affeldt said one of the issues the aquatics teams face is the lack of diving facilities.

“Right now the high school swim team can’t compete fully in a competition because they don’t have a diving team, and the reason we don’t have a diving team is because we don’t have pools that are deep enough to actually hold a diving board,” Affeldt said.

Donaldson said the aquatics teams face other issues that affect the team.

“In the middle school pool, the tiles in the deep end have been falling off for months, even after they did the renovations,” Donaldson said. “At the high school, there are chunks missing from the side of the pool that you can cut yourself on.”

Affeldt said all the swim teams that use the Park facilities face problems due to limited space.

“The high school pool is big enough to hold two teams, but definitely not any bigger than that, and I think it kind of puts our kids at a little bit of a disadvantage,” Affeldt said.

According to Affeldt, the Pool for Park survey within the Facebook group showed renovations to the aquatics facilities would be supported.

“The vast majority of people want to see something done about the aquatics facilities, with a slight majority wanting to renovate an already existing space,” Affeldt said.

Donaldson said she feels everyone should vocalize their support for the renovations.

“Even if the pool doesn’t affect you, (it) doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care,” Donaldson said. “If people who aren’t in swimming sports show support I think people will actually pay more attention.”

Affeldt said the group realizes there are other competing concerns for the district as well.

“We fully recognize that there are may needs across the district, we would just like this one to be considered,” Affeldt said.

According to Affeldt, the group has no current plans to take major action.