Edison High gets a new pool after more than 50 years
As the United States was putting a man on the moon, Edison High School was putting a pool into the ground.
The Chargers’ swim and dive pools opened along with the school in 1969.
But with a deep end that was, well, pretty shallow at 4½ feet, Edison has been unable to host varsity water polo matches over the decades.
“They were designed for aesthetic reasons, not for practical reasons,” said longtime Edison swim coach Matt Whitmore, who also used to coach water polo. “They were never good for water polo, ever … I think we could have had a great fundraiser, just in the [demolition], by offering former aquatics people a chance to take a sledgehammer to the old pool. That’s how beloved that pool was.”
A new opportunity is upon the Chargers aquatics program: a pool that measures 40 meters long by 25 yards wide, allows for up to 10 lanes of competitive swimming and can accommodate regulation water polo.
Edison hosted the first event in the new pool Tuesday night, as it played the first on-campus varsity water polo match in school history. Fans lined the deck as the Chargers girls’ water polo team beat Fountain Valley, 16-1, in a Wave League finale that also served as Edison’s senior night.
Perhaps fittingly, seniors Bella Schulze and Lily Worley led the scoring with four goals each as Edison clinched a share of the league title. Worley scored the first goal.
“It feels like you’re at home,” said Schulze, who jumped into the water with her teammates for a first practice Monday. “We’ve been going 30 minutes out to Ocean View [High] forever [for practices and games], and now we’re able to just be here. It feels so good to finally be here. Finally, a home pool we get to enjoy.”
The new pool cost about $5 million to complete, Huntington Beach Union High School District spokeswoman Hayley Berbower said. The district broke ground on the project in March 2021.
An official grand opening with administrators and the school board should happen sometime later this month, Berbower said.
The pool also has an accessible ramp with wheelchair access, stairs and a shallow area for aqua therapy. That will help support the school’s Special Abilities Cluster (SAC).
“We are excited about the pool’s new, unique features that will accommodate our students with physical disabilities,” said Edison assistant principal Joe Loomis, who oversees the SAC program. “It will allow us to host Unified Sports and Special Olympics events on our campus.”
Edison aquatics parents have been clamoring for the new pool, which was constructed by Balfour Beatty and designed by PBK, for years. Whitmore said they raised more than $70,000 themselves through the Edison Charger Aquatics Complex Foundation, for features like bleacher seating and sunshades.
The bleachers have yet to be installed, Edison athletic director Rich Boyce said, as the final inspections are being completed.
Many didn’t mind standing Tuesday night to watch the Chargers play. Greg Angelovic, the Edison Aquatics booster club president whose daughter Bridget is a senior on the girls’ water polo team, announced the action.
Though Bridget is the last of his three kids to come through the school, Angelovic knows the importance of the new pool for the future classes.
“I do feel, honestly, that this is going to be a sea change,” he said. “Now we can have club teams playing there, and it will be natural to have kids feed in. We’ve lost so many kids to other surrounding schools for water polo, and a lot of that had to do with the fact that we didn’t have a pool … Five years from now, I don’t see any reason why Edison can’t turn into something similar to what Huntington [Beach] has put together, to be honest.”
Boyce said he is happy that the water polo players no longer have to be nomads but also that the physical education and SAC students will be able to use the new pool.
Whitmore, meanwhile, who has been coaching at the school since 1986, can’t wait for swim season. He has been posting updates on the pool’s progress on his Instagram page.
“You’d hear teams walk on the deck and hear the under-the-breath comments about, ‘Oh, man, this pool is terrible!’” Whitmore said. “The pools were just in disrepair, and not from anything bad the district has done. They were just old and worn out.
“It’ll be nice not to be the snubbed individual in the room, right?”
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