Nearly three and a half years since the pool facilities at Bakersfield College were renovated, the school still is without a swim team.
“It’s not happening right now,” said BC Athletic Director Jan Stuebbe.
Stuebbe said that when the new pool was built, the college had intentions of adding men’s and women’s swim programs within five years. The state’s community colleges have faced major budget cuts to athletic programs in the past several years.
According to Stuebbe, “budget is the main reason” that BC has not pursued a swimming program.
Bakersfield College had a swim team into the early ’90s before cutting the program because of funding and lack of interest.
“Bakersfield is a big swim community…We’ll do it as soon as possible,” Stuebbe said.
According to Stuebbe, the cost of having a men and women’s swim team with one head coach would cost about $20,000. Stuebbe added that aside from labor costs (coaches salaries), the 16 BC sports programs share approximately $300,000.
“We’re still in a budget crisis, but it’s getting better,” Stuebbe said.
The primary costs for having a swim team at a community college level are travel expenses and coaching salaries.
“I wish they would have had a team,” said BC student Zak Brown.
Brown currently swims for Bakersfield Swim Club and is the oldest swimmer on his team by two years. He said he would swim on a team if BC had one because he would like to interact with swimmers his age. Brown will attend Niagara University in Buffalo, N.Y., next year on a partial swimming scholarship.
Don Watson, head coach for Orange Coast College’s swim team in Newport Beach, said travel and equipment expenses are about $7,000 a year. OCC gives the team $5,000 a year, and the team raises an additional $2,000 through fundraisers.
“It’s not that expensive to add a swim team on,” Watson said.
Waston said that a small team could get by with a part-time coach whose salary would be approximately $6,000 per season and a travel budget as low as $5,000 to $6,000 per season.
Rick Millington, head swim coach for Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill about 35 miles east of San Francisco, said that his team’s costs total close to $20,000 a year with travel and coaches salaries. Aside from the league dual meets and conference meets, Millington said that his team travels to three competitions, including one as far away as Pasadena, that accounts for a considerable amount of the $9,000 per season in travel expenditures.
Millington also said that a team “can cut travel expense significantly” by opting to compete in league and conference meets only.
DVC has one of the largest community college swim teams in the state, consisting of over 50 swimmers on their men’s and women’s teams.
The team relies heavily on local business donations and raises between $1,000 and $2,000 per season from contributions from swimmers’ families.
Millington said that DVC will be hosting the state championships this year and that his team raised an additional $800 selling advertisements in the program.
Stuebbe said that there were no boosters or fundraising organizations at this time for swimming. Stuebbe maintained that the development of those programs could happen quickly when the time comes.
“It would be a good step for BC to add a program,” said Lance Cansdale, men’s swimming head coach at Cal State Bakersfield. “Any time you can add a swim team to any region is great.”
According to Cansdale, nearly 30 percent of the swimmers on the men’s team this year were recruited from the community college level.
He said that he has had a lot of success from swimmers coming from community colleges.
Cansdale cited Ventura College as one of the “powerhouse” schools that his program looks to recruit from. He also said that larger schools are doing the same thing.
Bakersfield Swim Club head coach Keith Moore, who is a product of community college swimming, said that if BC had some kind of team in place, it would be a big thing for the community.
“It would give them (high school senior swimmers) another option,” Moore said.
The remodeled BC pool facility was completed in the summer of 2002.
The approximately $3 million facelift included the addition of a 50-meter by 25-yard Olympic-sized competition pool to supplement the 25-yard lap pool.
Charlie Pike, a BC aquatics instructor and BSC assistant coach, said the pool, which was imported from Italy, was the first of its kind to be built on the West Coast.
The sides of the pool are constructed of stainless steel, something that is key in cutting maintenance costs in the future. The pool is the same type of pool that was used in Long Beach for the 2004 Olympic Trials.
“We already have this pool, and that’s a majority of the expense,” Pike said.