With Indianapolis producing so many great high school and college swimmers every year, many of the college teams have been able to use local connections to find alternative locales for training in wake of the lockdown of the IUPUI Natatorium on Tuesday with a gunman being reported on campus.
Indiana and Arizona are both headed to Center Grove High School, about 16 miles south of IUPUI. Arizona freshman Emma Schoettmer graduated from their in 2012, and Indiana sophomore Allie Day graduated in 2011.
Minnesota, meanwhile, is using the pool at a local Gold’s Gym to get in some quick pre-meet warmup.
Indianapolis is fortunate to have a very large swimming community, and a number of high-quality facilities for use. Missouri is using North High School, assistant coach Julie Stupp tells us, though there’s no obvious connections there. Northwestern has already come-and-gone from Zionsville High School, and North Carolina will use that pool next. Zionsville is located in Northern Indianapolis, near Carmel.
This is indicative of the spirit with which Indianapolis has embraced this meet. After some attendance issues last year, even the massive IUPUI Natatorium was sold out well before the start of the meet, and now the local teams are opening up their doors to college teams.
Though those who are still locked-down inside of the IUPUI Natatorium report that they feel safe and secure inside of the locker rooms, there still exists the matter of the disruption of the pre-meet routines that swim teams take very seriously. We learn a lot about who the top coaches are when things like this arise; who can keep their team focused, and who will put in the effort to make the best of a bad situation. We saw it with the dreaded Norovirus outbreak at the 2010 Men’s NCAA Championship meet. There, two of the best, Frank Busch and Eddie Reese, still kept their teams on track despite being among the hardest-hit teams.
