OCC Pool's Closure Will Mark End Of An Era In Ocean County's Swimming History

When Ocean County College closes its pool permanently later this year, it will close a chapter of local swimming history that goes back decades.

But how the next chapter will be written is unclear.

For years, the Ocean County College pool hosted not only the college team, but the community as a whole. That will come to an end in August, when the college closes the 47-year-old pool and drains it for good.

The closure was announced March 11 on the college’s website, but word only began reaching a broader audience earlier this week. College officials say the pool and its competitive swimming team are being shut down because the costs to keep the pool running -- it is not ADA-compliant, and parts for its aging filtration and pump systems have become nearly impossible to find -- simply outweigh the benefits. It is tentatively scheduled to close Aug. 14, barring any major equipment failures, according to the announcement.

“It’s just sad,” said Gretchen Surette, member services director at the Ocean County YMCA who also oversees the Y’s acquatics program. “Every swimmer of a certain age remembers swimming in that pool.”

Surette was one of those swimmers, starting in the Toms River recreational swimming program years ago, and then swimming at the college while competing at Toms River High School North in the late 1980s.

“The rec program has been the feeder program” for the high school swim teams, Surette said, in part because it was always very affordable. The township operates a municipal pool at Snug Harbor Beach, but whether that pool can accommodate the recreation program is not known. What the recreation department is planning remains uncertain. A person who answered the phone in the recreation office Tuesday said the program is “at a standstill,” but a call Wednesday to Jason Tate, director of the township’s recreation department, was not returned by the weekend.

Berkeley Township’s recreation swimming program also utilized the OCC pool, and what Berkeley Township will do is not known.

As for high school swimming and its ties to OCC, that relationship has slowly changed over the years.

For many years, high school swimmers from around Ocean County practiced in the college pool and competed there for both dual meets and championship meets. The Ocean and the Monmouth county meets were held there, as were the Shore Conference Championships, and meet records from that era still stand: the 1990 Shore Conference meet records of Rumson’s Heather Gibbons in the 200 and 500 freestyle races, and the 1988 Monmouth County meet records of Shore Regional’s Paulette Russell in those same distances, listed in records maintained by the Jersey Shore Swim Coaches Association, were set in the OCC pool.

That changed when the Ocean County YMCA opened its 12-lane pool in September 2001. Surette said the YMCA has hosted the Ocean County and the Shore Conference championships since January 2002, and the Monmouth County meet was held there from 2002 through 2010, moving to the Neptune Aquatic Center when after that facility opened in 2011.

Schools that had practiced and held dual meets at OCC -- the Toms River schools, Brick and Brick Memorial, Manchester -- migrated to the YMCA or elsewhere. This winter, Jackson Memorial, Jackson Liberty and Central Regional were the only schools practicing at OCC, according to people contacted for this article.

“I feel sadness that it’s shutting down,” said Cindy Stout, who coaches the Central Regional girls squad. “It’s the end of an important era.”

Stout swam at Toms River South in the late 1980s, when the Indians still practiced at the college. She then went on to swim for the Vikings.

“That program was great for kids who couldn’t go on to compete at that next level, and for the kids who couldn’t afford to go to a big school,” Stout said. It gave those kids a chance to keep swimming, she said.

And the OCC swim team, especially in recent years, was solid: according to the college’s website, the Vikings, coached by Cindy Stout’s husband Steve Stout, had two All-Americans and 76 honorable mention All-America swimmers and won the 2009 Men’s and Women’s Non-Scholarship Division National Championship.

But swimming participation has dwindled at junior colleges, with just 12 junior colleges still offering swim teams, Cindy Stout said. “And those teams are either really big or tiny.”

For the last few years, Ocean County College competed against Division III colleges to fill out its schedule, according to schedule records available online.

Cindy Stout said Central’s practices -- boys and girls -- may move to the Ocean County YMCA next winter.

“They’re trying to accommodate us,” she said, which Surette confirmed.

Currently, the three Toms River schools, Manchester and Lacey practice at the Y, Surette said. Donovan Catholic uses the Y for its meets, and the two Brick schools practice at the Neptune Aquatic Center, she said. Barnegat and Southern practice at the St. Francis Community Center on Long Beach Island. Point Pleasant Boro also has a swim team, and holds its practices and meets at the Camp Zehnder pool in Wall, an outdoor pool that was covered with a bubble a couple of years ago.

During the high school swimming season, “From 2 to 9 (p.m.) we are packed,” Surette said, with the schools getting two-hour practices. The three Toms Rivers practice from 2 to 4 p.m., she said, with both the 12-lane pool and the six-lane pool shut down to accommodate the practices. After that, the 12-lane pool is shared by two schools at a time. Adding three more schools to the mix may result in some less than ideal practice times, she acknowledged, but she said it was too soon to know what would happen.

“There’s not enough water,” Surette said, referring to pools that are useable for large programs such as high school swim practices.

Ocean County College’s official announcement cited a number of issues that make retrofitting the pool cost-prohibitive, from the 22-year-old filtration system to an obsolete timing system.

The biggest issue, however, is the fact that the pool is not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which required that all public pools be made accessible to those with disabilities, including measures such as the addition of a lift, to lower and raise those who use wheelchairs into and out of the pool. “ Due to the age of the building, it is not possible to make the necessary renovations,” said OCC’s announcement, which was signed by Norma Betz, vice president of student affairs, and Ilene Cohen, executive director of athletics. The notice said the college continues to look for alternate solutions.

A voicemail left Tuesday for OCC officials requesting specifics on the college’s cost estimates to upgrade the pool was not returned by the weekend.

Information published by the American Hotel and Lodging Association in 2012 noted the cost at that time of installing a permanent chair lift was about $9,000, including installation. But whether the lift is the only ADA issue at the OCC pool is not known.

Surette said the YMCA pool -- a 12-lane, 25-yard pool with state-of-the-art timing touchpads -- cost more than $2 million when it was constructed 15 years ago.

To build something similar today would likely at least $5 million, based on USA Swimming pool specifications and cost estimates per square foot from the website of EVStudio, a Denver-based architecture and engineering firm that specializes in public facilities.