City makes timely investment for Sportsplex pool

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This article was published 14/02/2025 (295 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When it comes to the world of competitive swimming, timing is everything. But if Brandon Bluefins president Ron Fay could add another item to that list, reputation would come a close second.

Thankfully, it appears that a little good timing may save the city’s reputation for hosting swim meets into the future.

The Bluefins swim club is a non-profit organization that promotes excellence in swimming, and they’ve been making a splash here in Westman since 1986.

To that end, they host swim meet events at the Sportsplex pool — in fact the club hosted another successful junior provincials swim meet here in Brandon this past weekend, posting one of its best showings with multiple personal bests and a record haul of medals.

But the stress level for organizers was through the roof last weekend, as organizers held their breath to see if the touch pad equipment used to record competitor times would work or not.

“This weekend, we had trouble with one of the touch pads on one of the sessions,” Fay said. “So we got everybody in that lane to also have a manual stopwatch, and they wrote out the times manually, so that if there was an issue with the electronics, there was a manual backup.”

If the timing system electronics are functioning normally, the results will flow right into the computer reporting system.

“It works very slick,” Fay said. “It’s when they don’t that it’s an issue.”

The trouble with the touchpads wasn’t a complete wash as the system does have a backup beyond the manual timers. But Fay says the system has to be monitored by the official overseeing the functioning of the electronics.

“That was actually my job on the weekend, and it was hair raising, because you know you’re running a 50-metre race. The race is over in a minute. You’ve got 20 heats, and it’s 20 minutes basically of staring and making sure that nothing goes south.

“These races, they happen … bang, they’re done. There’s no going back and saying, ‘Well, what happened there.’”

Fay says the timing electronics currently in use at the Sportsplex were installed for the Canada Summer Games competition in 1997, and they still operate on antiquated computer systems that cannot be upgraded without replacing the entire aging system.

“Some of the equipment is becoming obsolete. It’s electronics. Our existing timing equipment requires laptops that are probably 10 or 15 years old, just because of the connectivity on them. They’re looking for the old serial ports on the back of that computer that don’t come on the new ones.”

The club has been working to raise extra funds to put toward paying for the replacement of the timing equipment, but a non-profit doesn’t have a lot of extra cash on hand. And while the Bluefins operate things, the system is owned by the City of Brandon.

While there have been some discussions with the city’s administration, it wasn’t until this week when the Sun starting making inquiries into the nature of the electronics problem that Fay learned that city council had approved money for the improvements for the current fiscal year, coming out of last month’s budget process.

The fact that the city’s recreation manager, Heather Reimer, has been on vacation the last few weeks, may have delayed the flow of information.

Again, another timing matter.

When contacted by the Sun, Brandon’s operations manager Patrick Pulak confirmed that the city will be contributing $95,000 with the Bluefins picking up the remaining $15,000 on a potential cost of $110,000 for the replacement.

“This will just be an estimate,” Pulak said. “Usually we go out into the market to see what the cost of these items are, and we’ll usually budget with a slight contingency in there just to be careful. That (number) will be based on some sort of market survey that we did before.”

Pulak agreed that the touchpads and the timing system have come to the end of their lifespan and need replacing. Without reliable equipment the city and the club will be unable to continue hosting swim meets like the one last weekend.

“It’s kind of critical to their ability to host competitions,” Pulak said.

The next step is to go to tender through an RFP process and the installation time will be dependent on delivery time once a successful supplier is selected.

“I would suspect within the next three to four weeks that we’ll go out for tender for those timing pads, and then based on supply, we’ll determine when they get installed.”

For his part, Fay was surprised and happy at the news that council had already approved the funds. He had all but wondered if the swim club’s needs had completely fallen “off the radar,” especially considering the financial situation facing the city in recent years.

“That’s wonderful,” Fay said when he heard the news. “It’s good to hear.”

With another meet coming up in February — the last until next December — he hopes things can move forward in time for the new season.

“If it can happen in that time period, that’d be wonderful.”

» mgoerzen@brandonsun.com

» Bluesky: @mattgoerzen.bsky.social