THE city’s swimming enthusiasts will bid farewell to goggles and flippers with cooler winter weather looming.
The Mount Gambier Aquatic Centre will close its doors tomorrow following a bumper swimming season.
Almost 70,000 people flowed through the doors between October 15 and March 31, with the number of casual swimmers, lap swimmers and rehab swimmers up on last year.
“At last count we had around 68,000 people through this year – it could be closer to 69,000,” aquatic centre manager Peter Collins said.
“Last year we had around 65,000 total.
“In terms of school swimming lessons, this season we averaged around 350 students per week for 18 weeks – around 6300 school students total.”
The centre conducted its own swimming lessons on weeknights between 3.30pm and 6pm, with around 1120 young people learning to swim each week.
“They are here once a week for eight weeks – they might have a swimming lesson every Wednesday night for example,” Mr Collins said.
“The number of lap swimmers and rehab swimmers we had each week increased this season – we averaged 40 each week between 6 and 8am and we had between 15 and 20 swimmers using the lap lane during the day.”
Mr Collins said aqua aerobics classes had proven increasingly popular.
“A few of our classes were attended by 60 people,” he said.
“On average we have around 30 per class and that is for three classes a week.”
He said weather often impacted the number of casual swimmers or “walk-ins”.
“Across the season we had one month of below average temperatures, two months of average temperatures and three months above average,” Mr Collins said.
“When the weather was above average and we had those warmer months the number of casual swimmers was above average too.”
