Beat the Heat at Norton Town Pool

(The following article was written by Jeffrey Fish.)


School’s out for summer and now the Norton Town Pool at Everett Leonard Park is open full time.

Already open during weekends in June, the pool opened for weekday use from 2-7 p.m. Monday, the last day of school, and officially opened full time--11 a.m. to 7 p.m.--on Tuesday. The hours are 10 to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.  

“It’s a great place to go. It’s fun. It’s a great bargain. There’s so much to do [at Everett Leonard Park] besides the pool. It’s a hidden gem of Norton,” said Pam McGillivray, the pool manager.

For Norton residents, a pool membership for the season costs $30 per person or $50 per family, according to the pool’s website. For non-residents, it’s $55 per person or $75 per family.

Daily rates of $3 per person and $5 per family are available for residents, or $5 and $10 respectively for non-residents.

The pool is also available to rent out for private parties and it has concession stands that are always stocked with “water, Gatorade juice boxes, chips, candy, and different varieties of ice cream,” said the website.

McGillivray said the pool’s opening week was “fantastic, to sum it up in one word. It was stinking hot, so the kids had a place to play, a place to swim and cool off.”

She said there were about 10 to 12 kids in the pool on Monday, which is on the lower end of attendance, but she expects the number to grow, usually 20 to 30 kids, as the Summer goes on.

McGillivray’s many job responsibilities include running the concessions, updated the facebook, answering questions, emailing members about the rental schedule, and sometimes filling in for the lifeguards, since she is certified.

But her favorite part of the job is “seeing how much people enjoy using [the pool], seeing how much fun kids have when they come here. The other night, the kids didn’t want to leave. It makes you think ‘we must be doing something right.’”

For more information, visit the town pool’s webpage.