Tragedy strikes! One of the biggest parts of the school is now closed for reconstruction. A little back story on the reason the pool is closed, the far wall from the entrance of the Physical Education hall was rotting away near the windows, to the point where it became unsafe for people to be in that room until it’s repaired. 

Several of the students are very disappointed by the closing of the pool taking several of the fun things about the physical side of the school away.

“It’s like my freshman year all over again, not being able to use the pool for swim team or aquatics class,” Gabriel Bickham (12) said. 

The Assistant Swim Team Coach Tiffany Houle said the lack of a home pool might make things harder to recruit athletes for the team. 

“With the pool closed a difficulty I could see is the younger swimmers having a hard time traveling to West to have practice leading to the possibility of several swimmers not coming out for the team,” Houle said.

As follows, several students say they won’t have time or energy to travel to a different school for practice every single day.

The sudden closing of the pool create other issues too.

“It definitely took everyone by surprise and the school made a quick turn around to combat the closing of the pool, getting rid of aquatics class and changing the curriculum for several classes involving the use of the pool. It’s a very unfortunate situation and it causes a hard shift for classes and sports teams of the Northwest, ” Principal Eric Hofer-Holdeman said. 

 At this moment, no one knows when it will be back up and running.

”We were told that the pool wouldn’t be open for the rest of the year, but we hope that by next school year it will be back in operation,” Houle said. 

There have already been many people for the school district coming and looking at the pool, deciding on whether to tear the whole section of that building down or just that room. For now, all that can be said is it is unsafe for anyone to be in that room unsupervised.