Washington pool opens for the year

The Washington Steele Family Aquatic Center reopened last week. After a slow start due to unfavorable weather, pool attendance is starting to grow.

“The first few days were chilly, and we weren’t able to open up Friday because it was so cold,” YMCA Aquatics Manager Samantha Van Houten said. “Yesterday (Tuesday) was pretty nice, we had probably the most people that we’ve had so far.”

Van Houten said this summer had substantial programming lined up, a far cry from last year, when the pandemic necessitated two disruptive deep cleans of the entire facility per day.

“I think people are liking going back to regular hours instead of the shifts that we had to run last year,” she said. “A lot of our swim lessons are already full, all of our private lessons that we offer are full, and we’re offering a swim team clinic for more advanced swimmers, and we have a lot of people signed up for that.”

In addition to swim lessons, Van Houten said the pool would offer special needs swims this summer which were initially planned for last year but were delayed by the pandemic.

Additionally, the pool will again host aqua aerobics classes this summer. Van Houten said the classes were popular several years ago but ended due to staff changes.

Although many places in Iowa struggled to hire lifeguards this summer, Van Houten said it was a non-issue for the Washington pool.

“I think it helped that we were open last year, so a lot of my guards that I had last year came back,” she said. “I only lost just a few because of, you know, graduating to college or they moved or going on vacation all summer. I got really, really lucky that mine came back.”

A list of the pool’s summer programming can be found at the Washington County YMCA website.