Hurricane Swim Club loses YWCA pool time

I am writing this as the wife of a coach and mother of three swimmers on the Hurricane Swim Club. On Thursday, I learned that after the end of July, 18 years of collaboration with the Bangor-Brewer YWCA will come to an end, since the YWCA Board of Directors has decided not to rent pool time to the Hurricane Swim Club.

Several weeks ago, my husband had a meeting with the YWCA executive director and aquatics director in regard to future pool rental arrangements. At that time, he asked what it would take financially for HSC to stay at the YWCA. He did not get a response but was assured we would have pool time.

Thursday, he asked the same question, did not get a response and was told we would have pool time if we combined with the Bangor YMCA/YWCA swim team.

Some people believe that the teams are very similar and should combine. I now believe that these people have been misinformed. My three boys have participated on both teams and I will tell you that they are drastically different.

First, a little history about the club. HSC was founded in 1985 as an alternative to corporate-run swim teams. The club is a nonprofit, USA Swimming affiliate, run by a parent board dedicated to offering a high quality program to children in Bangor as well as 13 surrounding communities.

Last summer, the founding coach and his assistant coaches resigned and the board of directors asked my husband if he would be interested in the job. He was an original member of the 1985 team as well as a distinguished Brewer High School swimmer. He currently is the president of the Eastern Maine Swim Officials Association and regularly officiates high school and YMCA swim meets. For the past few years he was a volunteer coach with a local age-group swim team. He has been a positive advocate for swimming for 27 years.

Our membership started with 35 members in the fall and expanded to nearly 60 before season’s end. Obviously, he and his coaching staff must be doing something right.

All the kids are swimming fast, improving their strokes and having a lot of fun. We have offered a winter training camp in Saint John, New Brunswick, often allowing swimmers from other clubs to join us so they could have the additional opportunity. We won the 8 and Under Combined State Championship in February. This is a first for any club in our area.

We also placed fourth at Winter Championships in March behind some very strong teams from the southern part of the state. One-sixth of the swimmers who participated in Zone Championships in New Jersey were from HSC. To cap off an excellent season, 12 swimmers participated in YWCA Nationals in Charlotte, N.C.

I teach fitness classes for the YWCA which include YWCA Board members, YWCA staff and HSC parents. I am having a hard time understanding the financial decision the board made when my husband asked what rental fee would be acceptable for HSC to pay in order to continue renting pool time. Why would any nonprofit organization dedicated to serving the Greater Bangor community force out another nonprofit organization serving the children of that same community? Was the reason really financial or was it something else – maybe too much competition?

Eileen Williams

Clifton

UM trip sponsored

In response to Janette Nelson of Houlton, who is probably still in a state of extreme indignation about the women’s basketball team at the University of Maine going to play in a tournament in Hawaii – do your homework before you blast off on something about which you obviously know nothing.

Collegiate tournaments in the major sports, for the most part, are sponsored. Sponsor money is paid out to each competing team as a “tournament guarantee.” The money paid covers transportation, meals and equipment transport expenses. If Dole Pineapple, for example, is the sponsor of this tournament, Dole pays the costs of bringing Maine to Hawaii to compete.

A simple phone call to any number of people in the University of Maine Athletics Department would have yielded this answer.

Nonni Daly

Old Town

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