Likely swim school choice ‘disappointing’
WANAKA swim coach Stacey Wells is disappointed but not surprised she is being ‘‘tossed out’’ of the town’s new swimming pool, before it has even opened.
Unless there is a lastminute change of heart, the Queenstown Lakes District Council is expected, at its meeting today, to make its own Wanaka Swim School the sole provider of learntoswim classes at the town’s new Three Parks pool, due to open next month.
That leaves Mrs Wells’ Wanaka Swim Academy, and her nine staff, out in the cold.
It also leaves more than 300 swimmers the academy teaches each term with just the council option if they want to carry on.
‘‘It is very disappointing,’’ Mrs Wells told the Otago Daily Times yesterday.
‘‘It is sad when you have built something up over a long period of time.
‘‘But it’s not sudden news to me.
‘‘I always knew this would be the situation that was most likely to come up.’’ A similar situation had occurred with the private swim school in Queenstown losing out to the council provider in 2015.
Mrs Wells said she was humbled that a petition supporting her had been started.
‘‘You think it’s just your own personal thing to deal with.
‘‘When someone starts something like that and you see the amount of support and the lovely comments people have written down it’s just really overwhelming.’’
She thought it unlikely the council would go against the evaluation panel that was recommending the council’s school be the sole learntoswim provider, ‘‘but, you never know’’.
Mrs Wells began coaching at the present Wanaka pool in Plantation Rd 18 years ago but was ‘‘tossed out’’ in about 2008 for a couple of years when the council took over running the pool from the community.
During that time, she ran her classes at the Oakridge Resort, until she was invited back to the Wanaka pool.
This time, Mrs Wells said she did not have a plan that would keep the academy operating once the Plantation Rd pool was shut down.
Her classes will continue until the end of term 2, and two or three weeks in the new pool.