Pool party! A look at Clovis West’s renovated swim complex and what it means for the region

After going without its home pool for nearly a year, Clovis West High finally has its swim complex back.

And it was worth the wait for Golden Eagles coach Adam Reid, who has been looking forward to seeing the makeover done on a complex that was built in the 1970s and became home to one of the state’s premier high school swimming programs.

“The pool was the original pool from when Clovis West was built,” he said. “It was just the infrastructure underneath the ground and the concrete and the piping, and all that needed to be redone because it was corroding and could cause pretty bad damage on the pool deck or even sinkholes and things like that. It was time.”

Reid’s team got back in its pool two weeks ago and had a dual meet with Buchanan earlier in the week before hosting the Clovis West Swimming and Diving Invitational this weekend, where more than 1,000 athletes from 30 schools completed.

Features include fully resurfaced pools and pool deck, a new and advanced timing system, reworked plumbing and shower area, and a permanent 9,572-square-foot shade structure — naturally in the Golden Eagles’ cardinal and gold — that covers grandstand seating for 1,300.

That was the first thing that Golden Eagles swimmers Hannah Marinovich and Julianne Snyder first noticed during construction and as the final touches were completed.

“It’s very attention-grabbing,” Marinovich, a junior, said. “It’s very big, but it looks really great. It’s nice to have that now for the summer when it’s Fresno 170-degree heat.”

Snyder, a senior, said their swim complex is hands down the best, and not because it’s her home pool. Any swimmer from around the state is likely to marvel at the new complex, she said.

She encourages spectators to come out and take in the new features.

“If you’re a parent of a swim athlete or you’re a swimmer, coming from Northern California or Southern California, definitely come check out the pool,” she said.

“Even (including) the Southern Section, this is one of the best pools in the state, just because it’s like an Olympic complex, it’s one of the best you can find in California.”

Earlier this week, small jars of water collected from the pool just before it closed last summer were opened and poured back in.

The price tag for the renovation was not available.

New features at Clovis West swim complex

The old pool deck was completely removed and replaced, including all inserts for the starting blocks, flag stations, handicap lifts, tomb stones, etc.

Other new state-of-the-art upgrades include:

▪ timing system

▪ LED pool lights

▪ storage doors

▪ the shade canopy

▪ synthetic turf

▪ shower area

▪ pool plaster

▪ fencing

“It’s been in the works for a couple of years in terms of building up the plans and the funding and things like that,” Reid said. “It was definitely something that we knew was going to be coming sooner or later.

“We were just glad that it didn’t end up getting to a point where it was like an emergency shutdown that we could plan it out and get it done because it was getting to that point where the pool could have had damage to where we would have had to stop and then had to start from scratch, and that the whole construction process would have been a lot longer at that point.”

While the swim complex was being renovated, Reid said, they used pools at Clovis North and Alta Sierra and another junior high in Clovis Unified.

How renovation benefits school, city and Valley

Even with the age of the original complex, Clovis West already had hosted the past six CIF State high school championships and the Western Zone meet.

Reid is hopeful with the renovations, they’ll continue to host those events but also land bids for other prestigious meets, bringing more visitors and tourism dollars into the local and regional economy.

Clovis West is set to host the 2023 CIF State Swimming and Diving Championships on May 11-13.

“All facets of the aquatic world, we’re going to continue and then hopefully maybe build those up and maybe add a little more, some bigger meets,” he said. “We were already hosting kind of Western United States regional competitions and state of California competitions, and so we’re just going to look to continue those as we move forward.”