Mission Oak Aquatic Center helping boost local economy and interest in water sports

Making a splash, that's the goal at the Mission Oak Aquatic Center.

The Olympic sized-pool opened in February.

Since then thousands of students have competed and practiced at the site.

'It has been used everyday since, it has been fantastic, it's been a great morale booster for everyone on campus from students to staff, obviously the community," explains Mission Oak Athletic Director, Osama Hamid.

He says plans for a pool started when the campus first opened in 2008.

Now this facility is filling gaps in the community..

"We have those kids who have never had exposure to a pool before, never had resources, especially something like this," continues Hamid, "The whole idea is how can we help the community and how can we help people be involved in aquatics, learning how to swim, water safety and hopefully just grow the aquatics community."

The local Sharks Swim Team hosts practices and swim meets for its 230 swimmers here.

The 18-lane pool has the latest technology.

"It is an infinity pool, so there's no gutter, so the kids are getting used to swimming in these, and more of the higher competitive pools are the infinity pools. So if they wanna go to swim high school or college, then they are gonna see pools more like this," explains Terry Bessinger, President of the Tulare Sharks Swim team.

The impacts have already been felt on campus..

"We have a couple of kids that were not athletes last year that have already talked about, 'Hey, I'm trying out for water polo, I just wanna try it.' And that's what we are going for," expresses Hamid.

He says since the pool opened in February of this year their aquatics program has nearly tripled in the last few months.

Plus, in May, the center hosted the CIF Division 2 Swim and Dive meet.

There were 533 athletes, over 100 coaches, and 52 teams, and over the course of three days, there were about 1,500 people in the stands in total.

The economic impact in the community, with hotels and restaurants, was already evident within its first 100 days of opening.

The site also hosts lifeguard certification courses, and in the fall, there will be Mission Oak water polo events.

Leaders mention they hope to continue reaching students and the community as they navigate future opportunities for locals to get involved.

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