Swimmers, Divers Need Better Pools

* We wish to congratulate one of Ventura’s own championship divers, Troy Dumais, for his outstanding achievement at the 1996 Olympics Diving Trials in Indianapolis. His backward 3 1/2 dive, with a degree of difficulty of 3.3, earned him a perfect score of 10 from all seven judges. This was the only dive at the trials that was judged a 10.

At 16, Troy was the youngest competitor at the trials. He was only outscored by two other divers, but he had more points than 11 of the other competitors.

Troy has achieved all of this without having a local diving facility for practice. He has had to travel to Pasadena for a pool with diving facilities.

He has four brothers who are divers, and Ventura has many other young people who are divers--and all of them need an adequate pool, diving boards and diving platform so they can develop their skills. We have many fine swimmers in Ventura, some ranked nationally. They go to other cities and compete in 50-meter pools, but they have only 25-meter pools to practice in here.

We hope that the city of Ventura will see that Troy and the other divers and swimmers of Ventura have a place to practice their skills by building the Aquatic Center that the city has set the money aside to build. Let’s don’t have any more studies; let’s get the pools built.

GEORGE and

DOROTHY GRAHAM

Oxnard