Aquatics center opens

Friday afternoon, the wide-eyed looks and bright smiles said it all.

Girls who swim on the middle school swim team would be practicing at the Green River High School Aquatics Center for the first time. The previous night, the girls said farewell to the Monroe pool they and every other swim team have used for the last 45 years.

“We got to play games like sharks and minnows and we did relays,” Gaby Farnsworth, one of the teammates said.

Farnsworth said she was excited to use the new pool, something many girls said prior to dressing out and readying for practice.

“I’m very excited,” Delaney Gardea, another swimmer, said.

The lifeguards at the pool shared the students’ enthusiasm. Mary Shaw and Brandi Dale both said they were excited to work at the newly-completed facility. Dale said she was hired as a life guard at the end of September and initially thought they would be in the aquatics center at the time she was hired.

Coach Colleen Seiloff said the facility has left positive impressions on people who have visited days after its completion.

“You can tell when people walk in and look around,” Seiloff said.

She said being inside the aquatics center felt inspirational to her because of how the community came together to complete the project.

The pool was paid for through a bond initiative passed by voters in 2012. While the original amount approved by voters was approximately $11.5 million, which would be paid through property taxes during the course of a 10-year period. Additional revenue generated from the bond sales allowed for the school district to make a number of additions to the facility that would have been otherwise left on the drawing board when the district conducted value engineering cuts to keep the project under budget.

The pool may have an impact on local tourism as well. The facility would allow the district to host regional and state competitions, which would generate additional tax funds locally through the increased lodging tax, as well as giving a sales increase to the local economy.