Outdated equipment closes pool at San Benito High School

The water sports pool at San Benito High School has been drained. While the regular school year is over, this will still have a major impact on students and the community.

“I’m extremely livid about it,” senior Hayleigh Smith said. “This is my second home.”

Smith is facing a triple whammy right now. She and her water polo teammates can’t train together at the school’s pool. Some are traveling as far as Santa Clara to get water time.

“It’s really hard to not be practicing with the full team because we all have to go to different places,” Smith said.

She’s also out of work. She was supposed to be employed at the pool over the summer. Smith says she turned down other opportunities to work at the pool. Now, her college future could be at risk.

“I want to go to NYU for swimming,” Smith said. “And I have other options, anywhere else in California but I can’t necessarily do that if we don’t have a pool.”

All because of how it was constructed back in the 60’s.

“The outflow from the gutters and the filter were flowing into the storm drains and with current technology, that’s not acceptable,” said John Corrigan of Hollister for Aquatics.

Jennifer Rodriguez runs the Aquatics program for the city of Hollister. She says she’s concerned for kids in the community.

“I just want to make sure all these students and youth and kids we’ve employed have somewhere to go and something to do this summer and it can positively affect them,” Rodriguez said.

The upcoming water polo season is up in the air. Student athletes don’t know if the pool will be back open by the fall, or if they’ll have to travel outside the area.

“We may have to get up early in the morning,” said sophomore Josh Corrigan. “We might have to stay late. We’re going to have to do homework on the bus.”

Josh’s dad, John, is part of Hollister for Aquatics. He said he’d like to see a temporary fix now and is working on a plan to bring a fully functional aquatic enter to Hollister in the future.

“So what needs to happen is the pools need to get fixed to the point where the water polo team can practice in the fall and play games in the fall,” Corrigan said. “The PE classes can use the pools. And at the same time, Hollister For Aquatics is embarking on a campaign to try to build new pools through a coalition of city, county, the high school, the YMCA, the local swim clubs, San Benito aquatics. If we all come together, pool our resources together I’m sure we can get a nice, top notch facility built in Hollister.”

A decision is far from being decided. The School District owns the pool, and the School Board will have to make that tough decision. They meet again next week. Aside of figuring out a temporary vs. longterm solution, they could also discuss Measure G funding. We’re told part of that is earmarked for the pool.

The mayor of Hollister, Ignacio Velazquez knows there’s a sense of urgency, saying “It’s too important of a facility to not have it during the summer.”

We did try reaching out to San Benito School District Superintendent John Perales. We were told he wasn’t in the office on Wednesday.