From the heart-stopping edge of the diving platform suspended 10 meters above the pool, you can see 15 meters straight down, all the way to the bottom. The gin-clear water, which could have been bottled in the Florida Keys, takes your breath away.
But the aesthetics may be lost on a diver who is spinning head over heels and trying to gauge when to come out of a tuck to make a clean entry. So coach Rick Schavone will flick the switch on an agitator nozzle, shooting a fine jet spray across the pool to make the surface more visible.
Or perhaps a diver is standing on tiptoe on the edge of the 7.5-meter platform, about to try a back two-and-one-half tuck for the first time from that height. To provide a soft-water landing, Schavone can activate sparger strips on the pool floor that cough up huge burps of frothy air to the surface.
Agitators and spargers are two of the high-tech gizmos that make the Avery Aquatic Center -- renovated over the past year at a cost of $15.8 million -- the hot new athletic facility on a campus where sports stadiums and playing fields are continually being upgraded and outfitted in distinctive shades of green, terra-cotta, cream and white.
At Avery, the biggest and possibly glitziest collegiate aquatics venue in the nation, swimmers take aim at record-breaking times in fast pools with slick water, thanks to a new gutter system that smoothes out wakes and virtually eliminates interfering waves. Recently installed wheelchair elevators rotate out over the water to lower disabled swimmers into the pools, and new centrifugal swimsuit dryers in the varsity locker rooms spin at slac-like speeds. Two managers keep watch on pool chemicals and chlorine levels and staff in the mechanical room keep the pumps humming. There's even a floating bulkhead that arcs across the pool and slides up and down to create 25-meter or 50-meter lanes -- or any length in between. Swimmers are guided by black-tile lane lines when they race the length of the pool and follow royal blue markers when they swim across the width.
"It's kind of like laying out volleyball lines on a basketball court," says Dave Schinski, director of athletic facilities. "Here the water polo team plays on the same court as the varsity swimmers."
Schinski is the guy who knows what kind of paint (tnemic) goes on the stair rails and who keeps track of the water temperature in the diving wells (85 degrees). In the athletics department's 100-acre manicured fiefdom bordered by Campus Drive, El Camino, Galvez and Serra, he's the one responsible for overseeing the installation of big-league seats at Sunken Diamond and state-of-the-art scoreboards at Taube Family Tennis Stadium.
In late January, varsity players and tradesmen worked side by side, preparing for opening days. On one side of a temporary green wooden fence at Avery, swimmers dug out laps; on the other side, tile setters finished grouting the bottom of another pool that was scheduled for a March water polo competition. At Sunken Diamond, sprinklers watered the apple-green grass while three players shagged flies and 18 workers in yellow and white hard hats put the final touches on an upgraded press box and new dugouts in preparation for the February 9 home opener against Florida State. On a nearby softball field, backhoes created a bermed mound out of dirt left over from the pool digs, readying it for the first game of women's fast pitch on February 3.
And those are just the most visible works in progress. As he looks three to five years down the track, Schinski sees four big capital projects still to come: renovations to Maples Pavilion, the golf course and Stanford Stadium, plus a new student recreational center. A feasibility study of Maples suggests that 400 new seats can be added during the next two years for between $15 and $20 million, but changes to the stadium could come with a considerably higher price tag -- up to $1,000 per square foot. Four architectural firms recently submitted proposals ranging from constructing a new stadium on a different site to a slight massage of access to the concession stands.
Then there's the interest of the Bay Area Sports Organizing Committee, which is trying to bring the 2012 Summer Olympics to San Francisco. The group wants Stanford to host the opening and closing ceremonies, a portion of the athletes' village and five Olympic events: badminton, softball, water polo, track and field and the modern pentathlon.
The organizers, Schinski says, "look at our dedicated football practice fields and see equestrian events and archery matches, so we have to consider all that in our plans. But mostly, we have to find ways to keep playing while we build."
