They See Bright Future in Muddy Waters

Ask for directions to the pool at the Los Alamitos Army Reserve Center and you get some strange looks and some funny answers.

“What do you want to go there for?” one of the soldiers says with a cackle. “Are you going to fix it or something?”

Then when you tell them there’s a press conference to announce that the pool is the future training site of the U.S. National water polo team, the soldiers shake their heads and burst out laughing.

Once you step inside the wooden fence that surrounds the 25- by 55-yard pool, you realize the joke was on you. The pool--or in this case, the swamp--is filled with a thick layer of mud, weeds and brown water. Until chlorine was recently added, frogs also made their home there.

Hard to believe that in less than 90 days, the U.S. water polo team will make its home at a pool that has been ignored for five years.

“The first time I was here, it was pretty depressing,” said Rich Foster, president of U.S. Water Polo. “There were plants growing from the bottom to the top.”

But Lee Jackson, president of California Commercial Pools and the project’s contractor, had a smile on his face.

“We do a lot of renovation work,” Jackson said. “I’ve seen worse. I’ve had pools where I’ve had to drain the pool and basically mow the lawn before even starting to do anything else. This pool is structurally sound. It was built in 1942 and it has three times more concrete than they make pools with today. The main drawbacks are the cosmetics and the piping.” Jackson will be able to restore the pool, used as an Olympic training site in the 1970s, for $450,000. The U.S. Olympic Committee contributed $100,000 and U.S. Water Polo will pay $75,000. The remainder of the money, time and work needed to finish the project will come from donations by Bud Weisbrod, president of Aquatech Corp., Les Stambaugh of Sundeck Products and other private investors.

Jackson said a new pool would have cost between $1.5 and $2 million.

In the next 45 to 60 days, the pool will be re-decked and resurfaced, and new heaters and pipes will be installed. A late February or early March opening is being planned, which would give the national team about four months to use the pool before the Atlanta Olympics.

The team has been using pools at Belmont Plaza and Corona del Mar High but has had to fight for time with various high school, college and club programs. But the only competition at the new training site will be for the final 14 spots on the Olympic team. U.S. Water Polo will get first use of the pool, and the reserve center’s soldiers will be next in line.

“It’s quiet and it’s private,” Foster said. “Water’s water. To have a first-class training facility where we are the No. 1 priority is almost too good to be true.”