Facilities
The Auburn Swimming and Diving program competes in the James E. Martin Aquatics Center. The center first opened in the 1993 and was designed to be one of the premier natatoriums in collegiate swimming and diving. The James E. Martin Aquatics Center has hosted multiple competitions including the SEC Championships three times, the NCAA Championships twice, as well the 1995, 2000, and 2005 U.S. Open competitions. In the months leading up to the Atlanta Olympic Games swimming teams from Israel, China, Japan, South Africa, and Finland used the facility to train while the US Olympic Water Polo also used the facility.
The facility cost $10.5 million dollars and was a pet project of its namesake, former Auburn University President James E. Martin. Seating at the center has room for 1,000 spectators and an additional 800 poolside seats for competitors. The competition pool features a state of the art gutter system that absorbs waves instead of reverberating back into the pool, which creates a calmer swimming surface. The bulkheads also provide a flow-through design to prevent waves on turns. The pool is nine feet deep at the shallowest and 16.5 feet (5.0 m) below the diving apparatus. The entire pool is 77 yards (70 m) long (232 ft) and 25 yards (75 ft) wide. The bulkheads are movable and allow variable lengths for competition and practice as well as simultaneous diving. The facility also features the original Auburn competition pool, renovated as a warm-up and practice pool.
In the summer of 2007, Auburn University completed work on a new $1 million dollar outdoor training pool, part of a large scale effort by the Auburn Athletics Department to improve the school's facilities. Head Coach Richard Quick believes the pool will push Auburn's swimming facilities to elite status and improve Auburn's recruiting efforts.
Read more about this topic: Auburn Tigers Swimming And Diving
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