New Swim Club to Open in Fall

By KIPP HANLEY

BristowBeat.com- Exclusive

The Quantico Devil Dolphins swim club will soon have a new Manassas home.

The 51-year-old organization has begun construction on a 25,000 square foot natatorium in the city with a competitive eight-lane, 25-yard lane pool and an adjacent warm-up pool. The building, which could be open as early as this fall, is located on Central Park Drive near the Prince William County border and is the former home of Lake Lithograph.

The natatorium will replace the Jeff Rouse Aquatic Center training pool in Georgetown South and will feature numerous amenities including a weight room, locker rooms, café area, swim shop and learning centers for students who need after-school tutoring.

The $5.6 million facility will be available for private lessons and water therapy as well as rentals for high school teams and other swim clubs. It also will have space for an Olympic-sized outdoor pool behind the facility should funding become available, according to QDD treasurer and former Seton School swim president Chris Cook.

QDD hasn’t determined yet whether the pool will be open for general membership, said Cook, who purchased the facility last August.

“The goal is to have a lot of the high school meets and other summer meets here,” Cook said.

The warm-up pool will be set at 88 degrees, warmer than the competitive pool and optimal for instructional or therapeutic purposes, said Cook. The competitive pool will feature an evacuator filtration system to pull chloramines from the water surface as well as a new scoreboard and video board from nationally known aquatics sports company Colorado Time Systems.

“The water will be lighter and will be crystal clear,” Cook said.

Peter Benner, QDD’s Director of Marketing and Development, said constructing a new facility for competitive swimming makes logistical sense given the county’s lack of swim lanes. The Freedom Aquatic and Fitness Center, where QDD and several other club and high school teams host meets, is the only western Prince William facility available for competitive swimming.

“There is a lot of demand on that pool and at the same time, it’s still a public facility that still needs to meet the demand of the public,” Benner said.

Last Friday, Prince William County School Board member Lisa Bell took a tour of the facility and hopes her fellow board members will do the same. Bell, who represents the Neabsco District, has expressed concerns about the cost of constructing an $11 million pool for the county’s 12^th high school, which is slated to open by the fall of 2016.

“I want those funds … to go back into the classroom, teacher compensation and lowering our debt burden,” Bell said.

Bell said the QDD pool is a “well-developed, well-thought out plan that reaches out to a diverse group.”