This past weekend marked the end era for the Washington and Lee swim team; not only was it the end our regular season but we also said our final goodbyes to the Cy Twombly pool on campus.

I have spent my fair share of time in the Cy Twombly pool as junior on the swim team (a little under 700 hours thus far) and knowing I will never swim there again leaves me with mixed feelings. While it felt strange to say goodbye, there are many aspects I will not miss about the Cy Twombly pool.

Growing up in California, I had never swum in an indoor pool before coming to college so I knew it would be a little bit of an adjustment for me to get used to swimming here. What I did not expect was that three years later, I would still be getting accustom to all of the extra “fun” that came from swimming in this pool. Cy Twombly was always full of surprises for the swim team, from faulty air vents that left the team coughing in between sets, to locker rooms that housed both mice and cockroaches. One distinct memory I have from my sophomore year was walking onto the pool deck one Thursday morning at 5:50 a.m. only to see a bat clinging to someone’s equipment bag.

Thankfully, our new pool will have updated facilities (fingers crossed that it is animal free) in addition to being significantly larger. The new pool will be 16 lanes wide, instead of the 6 we have now, and it has a bulkhead that can be moved to transform it into 8 lanes for competition. Having this many extra lanes is a significant improvement considering our team usually has around 60 members.

It will also have more spectator seating, a wet classroom and a room for dryland, which will be beneficial to the team and any P.E. classes. It’s new location is also convenient for all of the juniors and any sophomore’s living in Woods Creek.

So while it was not a particularly emotional farewell to ole’ Cy Twombly, I am going to miss all of the memories I associate with it. I will never forget the countless mornings spent sitting on the pool deck waiting for Coach to yell us to put on our caps and goggles or the drylands where we struggled to jump over/on boxes and cones in the seating area, dreading the classic “mid-distance Monday” practice to come next. It will be the place where I met some of my closest friends as we “survived but didn’t thrive” through practices. Lastly, Cy Twombly will forever be the place I swam my first 200 fly in four years after I had three shoulder surgeries in high school.

While the fate of the old pool is unclear, I can honestly say that I am ready for this new era in W&L swimming. Cy Twombly has been our team’s home since the 1970s but it is time for us to move on to bigger and better things (which can be taken literally since the new pool is so much bigger). It’s time to make some new memories and set some new pool records as our team moves out of Cy Twombly and into the new pool just in time to train for NCAA’s in a few weeks.