The King Marlin Swim Club in Oklahoma has moved their half of the OKC Pro-Am swim meet to Lewisville, Texas, a northern suburb of Dallas, the group formally announced today. The meet will be held the weekend before Christmas, from December 17th-20th.
“When we heard in April that the Oklahoma City Community College Olympic Festival Pool was scheduled to close this summer, we immediately began looking for a new venue,” head coach John Brown said. “While we are sad to leave our home state, we are excited to work with Mid-Cities Arlington Swimming to offer this premier competition in the newly built Lewisville pool with our same, experienced leadership team.”
This will bring some clarity to a conflict between Brown, the original mastermind behind the idea in 1992, and the American Energy Swim Club, the club that he worked for at the time and that hosted the meet unabated for 21 years. While Brown worked for the club when it was known as the Kerr-McGee Swim Club and later the Chesepeake Swim Club, as they had different corporate sponsors (all three are energy companies), it is the same entity that is currently known as the American Energy Swim Club.
Brown’s departure from the club currently known AESC (formerly known as Kerr-McGee and Chesepeake Swim Club) prior to last year’s meet led to both teams hosting a meet in 2014 in Oklahoma City, on the same weekend, and had both claiming (sometimes heatedly) to maintain the tradition of the original meet started over 20 years ago.
The two meets will still be on the same weekend just as they were last year, but now a geographical separation should help both fans and participants better separate the idea of two meets.
While KMSC was forced to find a new location for their meet after the closing of the Oklahoma City Community College pool, they’ve found a newer, bigger, and prettier place to take their meet to. The vintage 2014 Lewisville ISD natatorium has a 50-meter competition pool, seating for 900 competitors and 1,200 spectators, and can run 36 lanes of short course swimming.
“This facility will enable us to run the meet a little faster. We’ll run preliminaries in two pools and still have 10 additional lanes for warm-up and warm-down during the meet,” Brown said. “Finals will be in a single pool.”
The drive from Oklahoma City to Lewisville is just under 3 hours, and while that will be a haul for the home team, it will be an easier trip for the many Texas-based teams that have participated in the past.
For more information, visit the KMSC Website at www.kingmarlin.com.
What’s with the $24 per swimmer facility charge, on top of the meet fees, on top of the $25 spectator fees? Your bleeding me dry here. OKC was at least reasonably priced.
As excited as I am to be going to Texas I must remind everyone that King marlin coaches quite their job and started a new club. Therefore AESC is the rightful owner of Pro-Am. We started it LAST YEAR this is the SECOND YEAR.
Congrats to KMSC for sewing up this venue!
Initial word is that teams from around the country are now looking at this meet due to it’s proximity (literally less than 10minutes from the terminals of DFW Airport) to a major international airport and the amenities around it.
All the high level national caliber teams will be back, and hearing some collegiate programs may choosing to attend also.
For the most part, this may end up being the most competitive Pro-Am in recent memory.
The Pro division is great, but at the end of the day, the Pro-Am’s have always been upper level age group meets as the focus on their rise upward. This meet should be… Read more »