Our pools are closed through the month of May. This is a fluid situation, but we hope to restart programming in June.

If you paid for the spring season, we will reach out to you next week.

While we never anticipated closing the building and our pools, we are taking advantage of this downtime to focus on getting some of the pool renovations completed as part of YWCA's planned expansion project.

What exactly is happening to our pools? Workers using the utmost precautions for health and safety are:

The artist's rendering shown gives you an idea of upgrades to the big pool. Al though we're not sure everything will be orange, it will be lighter, brighter, and more welcoming! And while we're not working on locker rooms yet, we're excited to get a jumpstart on these pool area renovations. We look forward to opening our doors this summer to share our new and improved aquatics environment with all of you.

You may have also noticed that the house on the north side of YWCA's property was razed this week. That space will become the new home of YWCA's Family Support Center!

The YWCA and the aquatics staff are committed to ensuring that the Flying Fish swim team provides a safe, healthy, and positive environment for all of it swimmers, coaches, parents, and volunteers.

During this downtime, you -- swimmers and parents -- can help us formalize this commitment and earn recognition from USA Swimming as a Safe Sport Recognized Club. How? By completing a free, web-based training session.

In order for the Flying Fish to receive Safe Sport certification, we need 15 percent of parents and 15 percent of swimmers (age 12-over) to complete this training.

Our LSC is Illinois Swimming and our club name is YWFF. Parents, if you are not a member of USA Swimming (most of you aren't) you will need to create a free account. Note: The athlete training course takes about 25 minutes and the parent course is slightly longer.

Our Red Cross lifesaving classes for swimmers age 15-over have been postponed until further notice. We will give you updated information as it becomes available.

We've updated our short-course team records and top ten lists.

Congratulations to Anne Leinenweber and Jenna Wild, who set team records in the open girls 1,000 free and open girls 1,650 free, respectively. And congratulations to all of the swimmers who made our top ten lists this year!

What can you do when you can't swim? We've got ideas:

Our swimmers also have ideas for coping as Fish out of water:

Reply to this email or email Pete if you have other stories to tell. Go Fish!