GTAC Hosts Swimming and Diving Championships

The Georgia Tech Aquatic Center will house the state championships for the 2010-2011 GHSA Swimming and Diving season. This pool has had its fair share of champions swimming through its waters; all the 1996 Olympic swimming, diving and synchronized swimming events took place at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center as well as countless other swimming or diving championship meets. Now, high school swimmers from around the state will get their chance to make history in this very same pool. With the state championships being held at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center, it gives these high school kids a chance to swim in a top-notch pool.

“We are excited to have this meet at our facility,” said Michael Edwards, the Director of the Campus Recreation Department at Georgia Tech. Edwards has been involved with the Aquatic Center since the inception of the idea in 1992. “I’ve been here since the beginning.”

GETTING STARTED …

The construction of the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center was completely funded by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games. It cost $21 million to complete the 1,900-seat main stadium that includes a competition swimming pool and diving pool. Construction began in 1994 and was completed in time to hold its first event in August of 1995, which was the seventh Synchronized Swimming World Cup. Georgia Tech’s first event at the Aquatic Center happened on Oct. 5, 1995, a swim meet in Georgia Tech hosted Emory.

The following year, during the Summer Olympics, the Aquatic Center not only hosted all of the swimming and diving competitions, but there was also a temporary water polo pool with a capacity of 4,000 seats. The Olympics were not the only championship-level competition to take place at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center, as the center also hosted the 2005 Men’s and Women’s Atlantic Coast Conference Swimming and Diving Championships, as well as the 2005 NCAA Zone Diving Championships and the 2006 Men’s NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships. The 2006 NCAA Championships brought in a record crowd of over 10,000 fans to the three day event.

“Georgia Tech realized its campus would change after the Olympic Games,” Edwards said. “With the construction of the Olympic Village increasing our housing numbers, we were going to have a larger student body on campus.” Therefore, the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center was seen as a chance to build something for these new students to do in their down time.

Since the beginning, Edwards and his staff had big plans for what the facility could become. “We knew that the aquatic center would become the anchor for the development of recreational on campus,” Edwards said. And that it did, with the help of a very large, multi-million dollar plan to expand the facilities.

EXPANSION …

In 2003-04 Georgia Tech reopened a newly renovated and now enclosed Aquatic Center that opened on Oct. 25, 2003 in a meet against North Carolina State. That year the Aquatic Center hosted 11 events that year before hosting 23 events the following year.

The expansion of the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center helped to make it the cornerstone of Georgia Tech’s Campus Recreation Center. The expansion of the Aquatic Center was part of a project towards expanding all of the Campus Recreation Center totaling more than $45 million.

“Hastings and Chivetta Architects out of St. Louis, Mo., came up with the architectural designs for the Campus Recreation Center,” Edwards said about the renovations. “We came in and built a floor, inside the Aquatic Center, but under the roof, using bridge technology. Now six basketball courts, three dance studios, an in-line hockey rink and an elevated four-lane running track sit on that floor above the Aquatic Center.”

STATE CHAMPIONSHIPS …

This will mark the first time that the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center has hosted the GHSA championships. Edwards was very enthusiastic about the prospect of hosting their first high school state championship.

“It gives an opportunity for another segment of the community to use a world class facility,” he said. “Our Aquatic Center is one of the best in the world.”

It will also benefit the swimmers to swim in such a top-of-the-line facility. “It’s a very fast pool. Its proven itself over the years that this pool is extremely fast.” When the NCAA Championships were here in 2006, five NCAA records and three American records were broken. “If [the participants] are prepared physically and mentally, they will have a good time.”