The Highwood Current Swim Club is seeking community support in anticipation of the upcoming extended pool closure.
The club has approximately 60 competitive swimmers, ranging in age between four and 17, at all skill levels, training out of the Bob Snodgrass Recreation Complex.
For the upcoming season, the club is facing a temporary setback, in that the rec centre’s pool will be closed from November 2025 to June 2026, as part of the recreation facility expansion project.
“Everybody wants a facility upgrade, but it's a little challenging when you have all these swimmers and no pool in the winter in Alberta,” said Kirsten Aarbo, Highwood Current Swim Club President.
Typically, the season begins in early September, with some athletes continuing to train and compete until July.
“We're hoping that we can have all the swimmers return,” said Cara Clifford, Highwood Current Swim Club Head Coach. “Our challenge is finding the pool space to accommodate everyone.”
The club offers competitive and precompetitive programs, along with classes designed for youth who want to swim for fitness and fun.
“We have quite a diversity of offerings, which increases our challenge of trying to fit everybody in the pool,” Aarbo said.
Challenges the club is trying to navigate include the surrounding pools already being at capacity and travel distances for families.
Aarbo explained that some swimmers travel from outside of High River to swim with the club.
“We’re trying to find somewhere that our swimmers can swim regularly during the closure, and not overwhelm parents who are already busy, so we’ll probably end up trying to set up carpools,” she said. “Alberta is challenging because the weather can be interesting, and we want to make sure everybody remains safe.”
In addition to finding space in surrounding pools for athletes to train, the club is working to adjust the training schedule to supplement programs with more dryland training.
“Our competitive groups already do dryland training, but we're going to have to try to add in more, because it's going to be hard to get everybody in the pool regularly,” Aarbo said.
The club is currently seeking local opportunities for dryland training that can translate to swimming abilities, such as Pilates, CrossFit, and Yoga.
“We're lucky we have Cara as our head coach because not only does she bring 30 years of coaching experience in competitive swimming, but she also had the challenge of coaching during COVID,” Aarbo said. “We're facing a similar struggle in that we're not going to have the regular pool access we're used to.”
Going forward, the club is hopeful the community will be supportive, encouraging, and understanding while the club works to ensure all the athletes who want to swim can do so in the upcoming season.
“We just want the kids to have a good season and make it through this,” Aarbo said. “These things happen. It's time to expand and fix the pool. It's getting old, so it's not something anyone's mad about, it’s just something we have to get through.”
The Town of High River issued a statement that the town is working to keep pool access open as much as possible during the expansion.
The old lane basin in the pool area is planned to be closed as of Nov. 11 and estimated to reopen in June 2026, with the new leisure basin opening on Dec. 10 that will be accessible to the clubs.
"We are working to transition as many uses as possible to the new leisure basin, but not all uses are compatible," the town said. "We are working directly with our users to mitigate these impacts."
Anyone interested in helping the club is encouraged to reach out through the Highwood Current Swim Club website.