Dynamo Swim Club, one of the biggest teams in the United States, will return to practice on Thursday with only senior swimmers.
“After thorough and thoughtful consideration, we are planning to resume modified programming on Thursday, May 14 for our Senior Group swimmers only,” the club, which finished fifth in the 2020 USA Swimming Club Excellence Rankings, wrote in a letter to its membership.
“In accordance with current state/local requirements, USA Swimming guidelines, and with the help of numerous healthcare professionals, our staff has established an initial schedule and safety expectations for our return to the pool. We have been encouraged by epidemiologists to take a conservative approach to resuming swimming activities.”
On Tuesday, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp sent out an executive order that indicated state pools could reopen on Thursday.
The letter outlines what Phase 1 of Dynamo’s reentry will look like without looking too far ahead.
“We envision this to be a multi-phase process as we introduce our members back to the pool,” the club wrote. “The plan we are sharing today will be Phase 1 of our reentry procedures. We will not put a timeline on when we will proceed to Phase 2. Instead, we will evaluate the safety and effectiveness of Phase 1 accordingly and use this information to develop Phase 2.”
Based in Atlanta, Dynamo will only allow senior swimmers to swim in the opening phase for multiple reasons, including keeping facility usage as low as possible and that “Senior level swimmers are capable of socially distancing better than our age group athletes and safety is our primary goal.” The club also identified that age group swimmers can return to “Peak training” quicker than the seniors.
To start out, they will only use one of the multiple pools they have available.
“Phase 1 of our reentry plan will only include the use of the dome at Chamblee, set up for short course yards. The dome will be fully open (regardless of temperature or weather), allowing for maximum air circulation. No other pools within Dynamo facilities will be used during Phase 1.”
The letter sent out by the club also includes the upcoming senior practice schedule, along with a long list of safety and positive test procedures that are consistent with USA Swimming’s guidelines. You can read the full letter here.
Don’t think this went down as expected. They were shut down from what I have heard.
Not true. County for their main pool had some last minute added rules to get confirmed and so they switched to other pool they operate in another ATL area county (similar size and ability to have space on the deck, 18 lanes available across multiple pools. Then their home county gave their main pool final approval to open early in the following week and the practices went forward as planned at the main pool, as stated in the plan linked in the article above. No shut down.
Good for Dyanamo! In this situation, leadership is doing what you want to do. I would take it a step (or 3) further and pack swimmers in five to a lane in an 8-lane pool if it was up to me and run practices all day. It’s not like anybody can do anything about it because the police aren’t going to enforce the stupid rules that our elected leaders pass down. Even “out of touch” USA Swimming isn’t qualified to be telling programs what to do. Swim programs need to be more like Elon Musk (Tesla) who said “screw you” to the state of California and opened up his plant.
Anyone know the number of lanes and projected number of swimmers per lane? or swimmers per practice? Trying to estimate what may happen with our team when it reopens.
Something like 18 lanes and max of about 20 swimmers per practice, if all show up for a practice. There’s a link in the article with all rest of their rules. Very thorough and focused on maximizing swimmer and staff safety.
Georgia has had a different approach than most states and has only had all pools (except backyard) closed for a couple of weeks. There are a few other clubs that have private pools that will open on 5/14, but all of the county and most city owned pools are not opening yet, and have no projected target open date yet. Lifting the restrictions of pool closures does not mean that ALL pools will open. Easier to control the financial considerations of the restrictions when you own your own pool.
In our area, south suburbs of Atlanta, the public pools have been closed since mid March and are reopening Monday, for lap swimming only, by reservation.
I’ve seen some of the pools referencing for members only with reservations. Many pools did close in mid March, but the Governor did not issue the executive order to close them until a couple of weeks ago. Dynamo has been pretty clear that they’ve only been out of the pool a couple of weeks – assuming that’s for their senior level groups as well.
Your comment about Dynamo is patently untrue.