This weekend’s Potomac Valley Long Course Age Group Championships have been moved to Audrey Moore Rec Center in Annandale after a mechanical malfunction at rendered the pool at Fairland Aquatics Center unusable.
The pool pump motor at Fairland failed Thursday, and until it can be replaced, the pool would be in violation of health code requirements. Meet officials considered postponing the event until next weekend, but were able to secure Audrey Moore thanks to plenty of quick phone calls and the cooperation of Fairfax County Park Authority.
Action was halted in the middle of competition on Thursday, and the 9-10 groups hadn’t swum yet, forcing officials to change the structure of the meet. As a result, it will be a timed meet, meaning the typical format of preliminaries in the morning followed by finals that evening will give way to the top times being determined throughout the day.
Other changes to the schedule include:
- The 800 free relays will be the first event on Friday morning
- The 10 & Under 400 free events were moved to Saturday afternoon
- The remaning 10 & Under events were spread over two sessions (Friday and Sunday)
- The final heats of the 800 Free which were scheduled for Thursday evening will be swum on Sunday
Officials decided against postponing the meet altogether because “we had a lot of 13s and 14s rested, and to have us postpone the meet would not have been fair to them when they are physically and mentally prepared,” said PVS Age Group Vice Chair Bill Marlin.
“Under the circumstances,” Marlin added, “it was a minor miracle that we pulled it off.”
Huge Kudos to the PVS administration, officials and everyone else involved for letting the athletes get the meet in. Amazing what you’ve been able to pull off in just a few hours. Thank you!
Know it couldn’t have been easy but just wondering why other avenues like: MAC, PG fedex or Univ md couldn’t have been obtained? My daughter had to miss her best event due to it being pushed to so late on Sat and it interfering with summer banquet. The change really hurt md schedules due to no back roads to get to VA. Just wondering minds wanted to know.
While I agree that the folks on deck managing the meet have done a great service getting some form of meet completed, clearly this isn’t the kind of opportunity these kids deserve for their hard work and dedication – PVS needs to do better than this to get any superlatives in my view.
Are you people just dumb?? University of Maryland was closed for 3 1/2 days last weekend for senior champs. Do you think they will shut down for another 4 days? Swimmer behavior, specifically from this meet several years ago, forced it out of GMU. That’s also why UMD won’t allow it to be held there. County facilities in Maryland and Virginia have real problems closing a public pool for three days to accommodate 800 swim meet kids. Especially in July. Do you really think these facilities can just shut down to the public on 12 hours notice? Perhaps some of you unhappy parents should get off your butts, sit on the PVS board and spend hours working on pool contracts for 20 meets every year. It is a miracle that PVS found any water at all for this meet and you dare to complain that it wasn’t ez to get to?
Really, Phelpsfan, I dare you to submit your name as a volunteer to work on procuring pools for PVS for the next year, other than whine, have you done anything to help the swimming community?
All,
The meet staff and host club, FBST, must certainly be commended on being able to find a place to hold the meet after the mechanical issues at Fairland. The logisitics of accomadating that number of swimmers in that period of time, moving the equipment, setting up the pool, groceries and a host of other tasks are daunting. Compressing these tasks in to a 4-5 hour period, (moving equipment at rush hour on the beltway as well), as opposed to the weeks of preparation that went in to the meet at it’s original location and schedule is truly a great accomplishment.
There is certainly plenty of room for more folks to get involved in Potomac Valley Swimming. Any help offered is appreciated and the more educated the swim families are through volunteering, the better we are able to offer our membership quality programming and improved swimming.
Brian Pawlowicz
Incoming Vice Chair for Operations
Potomac Valley Swimming
My compliments go to PVS for finding a way to allow this event to continue!
Parents who are unhappy with the solution are the same who are nowhere to be found when volunteers are needed to fill the many positions required to run a team/meet.
Thanks Again PVS.
all the pvs coaches and volunteers deserve tremendous credit for getting this meet finished. it was cursed from start. I’m surprised the pool didn’t get swept away in a tornado yesterday with the way things were going.
Tough enough getting the kids’ attention and energy away from divisionals, banquets etc., but ridiculous given all the distractions (was that an hour long poop-in-the-pool delay?!). great job everyone.
Fantastic job by the meet staff for pulling this off! It’s amazing what they have been able to do. Criticizers should be ashamed.
The complaints in the earlier comments are an insult to the dozens of volunteers who generously gave their time and effort to make this meet happen. Don’t you think that calls were frantically made to every venue (NOT “avenue”) in the area in the aftermath of the mechanical failure at Fairland Aquatic Center? Don’t you think the volunteers running the meet would have preferred NOT to have moved all equipment halfway around the Beltway with a few hours notice? Don’t you think they would have rather kept the format of the meet as it was originally planned, rather than completely re-formatting the competition to accommodate the time restraints imposed by FCPA?
Sorry that you had to drive to Virginia. Sorry that you feel unable to give superlatives. But you owe an apology to dozens of volunteers who made this meet happen in spite of some significant obstacles. My children and I are grateful for these people.
Hats off to all the Potomac Valley Swimming volunteers, the more I get involved the more I realize how much time and effort they put in. Job well done!
The PVS volunteers showed an outstanding effort in pulling this meet. Truly wonderful job.
Also, to swimmom:
Univ MD was closed for Snr/Jnr Champs the weekend before, and starting last night, are closed until Friday for the YMCA Junior Nationals.
Please do not criticize the efforts of the PVS staff – like Widebody said, its highly insulting.
Thank you PVS for managing to still hold the meet. It was absolutely amazing to find a LCM pool for so many swimmers so quickly! We are in MD and for us it was just as easy, if not easier to get to the new location. Thanks for your hard work and diligence to keep this meet going! JFD mom.
Kudos to PVS!
Thank you for finding a venue and continuing with the meet, I don’t know how you pulled it together! I am from Maryland and was glad to go to Virginia for meet.