The Verona High School swim team is one of only two pay-to-play teams at VHS and, with operating costs rising because of COVID-19, it has put up a GoFundMe campaign to help cover them.
The cost of this season will be close to $24,000, up from no more than $18,000 in previous years. A big part of the increase is because of the way the team must use the Caldwell Community Center (CCC) pool to comply with pandemic protocols. As a result, the team is looking to raise $8,000 from the community.
This year, the team will be swimming in what it is calling virtual meets. Verona will swim at the CCC by itself, record its times with an official present and submit them to the swim league. The other team will do the same and the meet will be decided without the teams ever being in the pool together. That won’t have the same competitive energy as when the teams and their fans could pack the pool area. But it will open all six CCC lanes to only Verona swimmers, which could mean that they will actually get more meet swimming experience.
Today is the 25-person team’s first day of practice at the CCC. The head coach is Verona’s Jackie Iannucci and the team has been approved to hire an assistant coach, Alexandra Domanski, a teacher at H.B. Whitehorne.
The link to the swim team’s GoFundMe campaign is here.
