The Pool is Where?

Finally, finally I have gotten back into the habit of swimming laps several times a week! I love swimming- was on summer swim team for seven years, but didn’t have the time to dedicate to being on the swim team here at McDaniel. I still love swimming, so when I first visited McDaniel, I thought I’d check out the pool, and so asked the logical question of: where is the pool?

Now, you have to understand that I was in the gym, Gill, when I asked this, assuming like most people that the gym would naturally house all athletic activities. Athletic activities including swimming. A normal assumption, right? To my extreme confusion, they responded that the pool wasn’t in the gym. Not in the beautiful new gym? Where then, I asked? “Underneath the dining hall.”

For surely, beneath dining halls is the typical location for all college pools. Naturally, one would investigate the glass windows beneath Glar, the dining hall for signs of water and other aquatic equipment. But there it lay, the swimming pool at McDaniel, snugly entrenched beneath Glar. It’s visible only by standing outside, facing the cafeteria- then you will notice the glass windows beneath the dinning hall porch (which used to say “Go Terror Swimming!” in bright green paint, now you have far fewer clues). But, once you learn how to get downstairs to the corridors beneath Glar in Decker Student Center, you’ll find the door by following the lingering smell of chlorine…

Welcome to the pool! Now every Tuesday and Thursday after lifeguarding I go swim laps for an hour, alongside other students (sometimes) and community members that can pay $1 to come swim. There are lap swim hours in the morning from 10:15am until 2pm and then recreational swim hours in the evening. While lap swim is purely for swimming laps, at evening rec swim (7-10pm) you can just come in and do whatever you want, take out the lane lines, play water polo, or mess around with friends.

So, if you’re looking for the pool at McDaniel, don’t look in the obvious places. Check downstairs instead to fulfill all your swimming needs!