News

It's time to take the plunge on aquatics center

The H-CATS, the City Aquatics Team youth swimming program, was hugely popular in the 1990s. We found the photo from the H-CATS alums’ Facebook promotion of a reunion in 2014.

By KATIE BRECKHEIMER, Published: March 5, 2026

Our community is talking about building an indoor municipal swimming pool, but it isn’t the first time that discussion has come around.

Back in the early and mid-1990s, the city’s Patton pool was in its heyday. Then parks director Carl Hill called it a gem, a bright and shiny well-kept asset for everyone to enjoy.

Katie BreckheimerNot only was it enjoyed by hundreds of people every summer, it was the home of a robust county swim team, the H-CATS, which had 200 swimmers at its peak. But there was a problem: the city pool was only open Memorial Day to Labor Day, three months, which left no place to swim during the other nine months of the year, other than the YMCA pool. That’s when a group of prominent citizens, mostly swim parents, started thinking about how and where to build what we needed.

The committee was comprised of leaders like Marcia Caserio, Dr. Ken Shelton and Marney McClung, Karen Saine and Ken Butcher. By the mid-1990s every local high school had a swim team, but practicing was never easy, especially since their competition season is in the winter. The YMCA was just not big enough. Adding to the popularity of swimming at the time was the 1996 summer Olympic games in Atlanta.

Having a 50-meter Olympic size pool at Patton Park allowed the parents of the summer swim team to host the New Zealand (NZ) Olympic Team in 1995 and ’96. The NZ swimmers held swim clinics for area children, and hosted an international swim meet, which brought in college swimmers plus four Olympic swimmers from the Czech Republic. It was a wonderful cultural event, even attended by the New Zealand Ambassador and his wife.

High on their win of organizing such an outstanding cultural experience, the Swim Committee searched for a location for a new indoor facility. Finally settling on Blue Ridge Community College, they talked to then president David Sink about building an indoor pool on the campus. Long story short, we have a very fine science and meeting space in the Sink building at the college, but no pool.

Over the years, local enthusiasm for swimming waned. The number of swimmers on the county team fell off as did the number of varsity swim teams at the high schools. Patton pool, built in the 1970s, was losing its once well-maintained luster, and fewer and fewer people were allowed to swim due to a lack of lifeguards. However, now the cycle has begun again! 

In 2019, the Henderson County Parks and Recreation Department paid for a professional needs assessment, which showed the top five needs included a pool. This set off a spark in the Recreation Advisory Committee, and a resurgence of advocacy for swimming was born. A new group, Support Our Swimmers (SOS) formed two year ago, with a mission of bringing together residents, organizations and local leaders to plan, fund and build a community aquatic center to promote health, safety, recreation and a lifelong enjoyment of swimming.

SOS has gathered letters of support, created a PowerPoint presentation and talked to every leader and group that will listen. They have taken three fieldtrips to nearby WNC communities with indoor municipal pools and documented the experiences. 

Patton pool’s demise due to Hurricane Helene has brought about a thoughtful replacement discussion by City Council; the YMCA-WNC continues to talk about renovating their location in Hendersonville; and Henderson County is considering a pool, perhaps after a few of their other capital projects are complete.

So why not get together and partner on building an indoor swimming complex, one that could host big meets and generate revenue? By sharing the cost, a really nice 50-meter pool with an additional 25-yard warm-up pool could be built. That way all of our needs could be met: swim lessons for all ages, water exercise classes, swim team practices and meets, lap swimming, aquatic physical therapy, kayak safety, scuba training and emergency rescue training.

Where to build it and the cost are currently being developed, but the time is right to come together and make it happen. As the cycle comes around again, let’s not wait. You can help Support Our Swimmers by talking to your elected officials about the need for a pool. To stay informed on the effort contact SOS at soshcnc@gmail.com.

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Katie Breckheimer is chair of the Support Our Swimmers steering committee and a member of Henderson County’s Parks & Recreation Advisory Committee.