The pool of FHS was once a staple of the school as it was used in the curriculum, athletics and for community events. Currently the pool is unusable due to a leak that caused it to close down during the 2011-2012 school year. The pool has remained closed to the current day because the expense of fixing it is too high. Now, that 6,300 square feet of space is being used in the most minimal sense of the word: as storage.

With only a small amount of the space currently being used by storage, many ideas have come up as to how to better utilize it. Some people would like to see the pool reach its former glory while others would like to see the space be renovated into something new that can benefit many athletic organizations around the school.

Physical Education teacher Christopher Coennen is one of the people who would like to see renovation happen.

“The first option is restoring the pool which could be used as part of the curriculum in Physical Education classes. The second option, which is what I’ve seen in a lot of high school magazines, is a multipurpose room where they have laid down turf with marked yard lines and along the perimeter they have weight machines,” Coennen said.

Coennen’s plan could benefit many different programs throughout the school as new lifting equipment could benefit all of our programs. A turfed surface in that area would be able to be utilized by many of the outdoor sports teams for indoor practices when the weather does not allow for outdoor practices.

Track and field coach Ed Shephard would also like to see the space become a multipurpose athletic room because it would allow the track team to practice anything from throwing to high jump and pole vault within the space.

“Putting down a turf surface would allow us to set up hurdles indoors, and we would be able to practice throwing indoors and able to put a runway in that would allow us to practice the jumping events indoors when the weather doesn’t allow us to practice outside,” Shephard said.

A transformation of this space would not only be useful to athletic programs but also to STEM classes as part of the space could be utilized as a laboratory studying the physics and biology of sports.

“What I thought was really cool was [that] on one side it could have an athletic trainer’s room and physics laboratory where students can monitor the movements of student athletes and find ways to make them faster, stronger and more efficient. What was really neat about it was that it was student-driven, with students coming up with solutions to problems schools didn’t even know they had,” Coennen said.

The idea of a multipurpose athletic facility may not be an idea that will see imminent action, but it’s something that could become a reality in the future depending on the direction that the school board plans to take the space.