| Stoughton Pool Equipment Improvement - 2024 |
Amount Funded: $2,900.00 |
| There are several positive end impacts to making competitive and recreational swimming available to all people in our community. Swimming is a lifelong sport and has many health benefits. Swimming helps relieve stress, improve flexibility, build strength, and improve cardiovascular endurance. Swimming also helps people maintain a healthy weight. Additionally, swimming teaches mental fortitude, accountability, and pushing the limits of what is possible. Team sports like swimming foster long term friendships and social connections, helping the mental health of our youth and adults alike.
We will benefit from this community grant by properly equipping our swimmers for competitive swim training. Additionally, the greater community will benefit through the use of this equipment during their own swim training. STAR families pay for pool membership to utilize the pool for practice and STAR also pays fees for pool rental for swim meets. This revenue to the Stoughton Pool supports the pool and funds its operation. This funding allows pool membership costs to remain as low as possible, allowing increased access to the pool by keeping those rates low. STAR provides a scholarship program for families who need support with registration. This funding opportunity will allow STAR to support more families through scholarship with funding for this gear, without funding for this gear, we would not be able to support as many families. Our goal is to fund 5 to 10 swimmers registration fees through scholarship per swim session depending on family needs.
STAR will purchase this equipment upon receipt of the funds and store the equipment in the closet at the pool. This closet and gear inside is available to anyone using the pool (general public, swim lessons, and swim teams). |
| STAR plans to utilize the requested grant money to purchase additional swim equipment for community (STAR, swim lesson, High School swim team, general public) use at the SASD pool. We have evaluated our kick board, pull float, and swim paddle inventory and many need to be replaced as this gear wears out over time and use. STAR tries to keep costs reasonable for our swim families by keeping community swim equipment on hand at the pool for swimmers that cannot afford to purchase their own. STAR-purchased equipment is shared with the greater community and is stored in the public storage area at the pool. Swimmers regularly use kickboards, fins, pull buoys, swim paddles, and tempo trainers. This equipment has been purchased on a rolling basis and needs to be replaced on a rolling basis.
STAR’s request will allow us to continue to grow and provide an inclusive opportunity for local athletes, young and old, to engage in a healthy lifestyle. We estimate that this will positively impact STAR (60 swimmers), the high school men’s and women’s swim teams (40 swimmers), the masters swim group that trains most mornings during the week (10-12 swimmers), children taking swim lessons (30-50 swimmers), and the community at large with both lap swim and water exercise (approx. 50-60 unique swimmers per week) that utilize the pool for lap swim and open swim. |
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