Inside Omro Family Aquatic Center

In this episode of Inside Omro, Brandon talks with Abby, Addi, Brooke, and Vinny, the Management Team at the Omro Family Aquatic Center. This Aquatic Center is a city-operated community facility that has been helping families make summer memories for 25 years.

We talk about what the Aquatic Center offers today, from open swim and water slides to swim lessons, lap swimming, water aerobics, birthday parties, and special events. We also discuss the importance of water safety, the role of lifeguards and seasonal staff, and what it takes behind the scenes to keep a community pool running smoothly.

Whether you grew up going to the Omro pool, have kids learning to swim, or are looking for a fun place to cool off this summer, this episode highlights why the Omro Family Aquatic Center continues to be such an important part of summer in Omro.

Transcript

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Our anniversary this summer, 25th anniversary. Uh, it's gonna be a really big party on June 20th. We have a lot of the community lending a helping hand, partying with a lot of businesses, uh, with the police department. There's gonna be all kinds of different things and be a really fun day. Hello, I'm Brandon Miller. The city of AMRO has beautiful parks, active organizations, and thriving businesses. In partnership with Future Omro, the Amro Area Community Center, and product sponsorship by Miller Auto. We'd like to welcome you inside ONRO. Today we're at the AMRO Aquatic Center. We're talking with the management staff at the AMRO Aquatic Center. We'll go around and uh do some introductions. I'm Vinny, I'm one of the head guards. I'm Brooke, I'm the other head guard. I'm Abby, I'm one of the managers, and then I'm Addy, I'm the other manager. Wonderful. So, um, how long have you guys been working at the aquatic center? This will be my fourth summer. Fourth summer. This will be my fifth summer. My fifth summer as well. My fifth summer as well. Wonderful. What do you guys like most about what you guys do here? I really just enjoy working with all different people. Uh I meet a lot of lifeguards, I meet a lot of patrons, and it's great to know so many people around the community. Yeah. I really like the environment. It's very like friendly, outgoing. You meet a lot of people, you make a lot of friendships. Yeah. I like the environment here. Absolutely. Yeah, I think kind of just like echoing what everyone else is saying, but um, our staff is all super close and stuff. Um, every summer we all get really close and make great friendships, and so I just think it's a really great environment to work in. So I enjoy that. I agree with everyone, but I will say I do swimmers and so I really enjoy it getting to see kids start in like the littlest class and then slowly make their way up and grow up. It's so cool to be a part of that and see them every summer come back and be grown from their school year and tell us their stories, and it's just cool to see. Yeah, absolutely. You guys have a lot of events and um a lot of activities that happen at the aquatic center throughout the summer. Why don't you guys uh tell me about those? Yeah, so one thing we offer is the flick and floats. Um we try to do these about once a month. So one in June, one in July, one in August. Um they're usually on Friday nights. The movie starts when it's dusk, so usually it depends on the day, but usually around like 8:30 to 9 o'clock. Um the movie we choose, or it's voted on by our staff. Um, in the past, we've done up, um, we've done I can't think of other ones. Despicable me. Despicable me. Um, usually like animated movies for sure. And people can bring their floaties or they can cuddle up on our beach chairs with towels and blankets, and they just watch a movie at the pool. So it's a really cool environment and something that it's just cool to do overall. Yeah, it sounds like a lot of fun. It definitely is. Yeah, especially on the hot summer night. Yeah, right. What other activities do we have? Yeah, so we also offer our swim lessons. We have group lessons and private lessons. Um, those are definitely very popular. Um, in April, we have two swim lesson sign-up dates for residents and non-residents. And so there's always a line forming outside the the doors before we even get there. Um so that's really cool to see that everyone is super um into our swim lessons. We have a bunch of different levels. Our youngest is like a parent hot, so parents can come swim with their kids, um, just practicing getting them comfortable. And then we our oldest is a pre-lifeguard, so people who are interested in maybe becoming a lifeguard, or if they just pass through all the other levels, then they can do the saves, the longer swimming tests, the brick test, stuff like that. So we have a bunch of levels ranging from like the frog slide area all the way to the super deep end. So it's very cool, yeah. And you have kind of an interesting zero um depth entry pool. So that's kind of nice. How does that work for the toddlers? And I'm sure that makes it a lot more comfortable for the parents to bring the kids and yeah, that's definitely um a pretty great area that families love to go to because we have all the chairs surrounding it, so they can sit and watch, or they can get in with the kid because they don't have to go in super far. And then we have the mushroom, the pipes, the frog slide, a bunch of different stuff that the kids definitely love to play in. So that's a great area. And then they usually know not to get too deep in there, and then um, yeah, I just think it's a really great area for smaller kids and their families. Absolutely. Yeah. Any other exciting events? Oh, we have our anniversary this summer, 25th anniversary. Uh, it's gonna be a really big party on June 20th. We have a lot of the community lending a helping hand, partnering with a lot of businesses, uh, with the police department. There should be all kinds of different things. It'll be a really fun day. Wonderful. What kind of like business activities and uh how what does the partnerships look like? So I think we're partnering with Pele Wiggly. They're gonna donate some items. I think some water, some watermelons. Uh there is a soda brand that it's also gonna be here. I remember the Callus, yeah. Uh a lot of other things like that. We have we're partnering with the school and some clubs, uh Key Club and Sources of Strength. They're gonna have like a little booth back there. Uh they're gonna be also be just helping us out, run some games. We'll be having a big splash contest, which is gonna be run by uh Winnicani Church. And so, yeah, all that, and there's a lot more, but I can't remember all of them off the top of my head. There's a lot, it's gonna be a big thing. Absolutely. Sounds like a fun event. So 25 years. Um, so this is the third pool that AMRO has had from what I saw. Yeah. Um so there were two pools in Scott Park. The last one closed in Scott Park, I believe, in 1999. And then this was built in 2001 and it's been going strong ever since. So that's quite quite the history for the aquatic center. And what other kind of uh events do we have or or schedule? We have free swim nights, which happen once a month, typically from five to seven, and it's where like anyone in the community or outside the community can come and swim at our facility for free. Okay, yeah. Get a lot of people, it's really fun. Awesome. You guys also rent out the facilities. We do. What kind of events are the is the pool typically rented for? So we offer two options. So we offer either a private party where they can rent out the pool either before we open at 12 o'clock or after we close at seven o'clock. Um they can do it for two hours, three hours, kind of depending on their preference. Um, they have the pool all to themselves with a bunch of lifeguard staffing it. So we have a lot of birthday parties, a lot of graduation parties. We have Boy Scouts come, Girl Scouts, baseball teams. It's a really fun opportunity to like have a pool to yourself, and it feels very cool because it is such a big facility to like have all to yourself and your friends. Absolutely. Um, and then also in the back area back there, we have a fun deck. Um, this is able to rent out during our open hours from 12 to 7. So it's just your own little space back there if you want to have like a birthday back there, have some birthday cake, have all the kiddos have their stuff in one area rather than spread around the pool deck, and then you also get discounts to admission for all those kiddos as well. Awesome. So I saw your pictures of the preparation for the season and the cleaning of the pool and and so forth. I've owned a small pool at home. Um, it's a lot of work to keep up the pool. So so who does all the air upkeep and the cleaning for the season and how does all of that work? Yeah, so we came um the second week in in May, and then we that's when we pressure washed everything and scooped out all the gunk from the bottom, the deep end and stuff like that. And then once everything was kind of pressure washed out, then our maintenance team, they were the ones who filled everything up. They've been keeping up with the chemicals and stuff to kind of make it nice and clear and blue that it looks now for getting it ready for open. But we also took care of a lot of like the landscaping stuff. Um, when our lifeguards and front desk came for their first orientation, that's when we put out and cleaned all the chairs, the umbrellas, um, all that sort of stuff, getting everything ready for the season. Yeah, yeah. I imagine it's a lot of work. Yeah, definitely is quite rewarding when it's finished, though. Yes, you see a nice clean pool and agreed. Yeah, okay. So you have um a lap area so people can swim laps. Yes. A little bit of everything for everybody, if you will. Um diving area. Um, what is 12 feet deep is the the deepest portion of the pool? 12 feet three inches, yeah. Okay. I'd like to say we also like pride ourselves on how accessible our pool is. Uh, you mentioned earlier our zero depth entry. We have a water safe wheelchair that we allow people to go into the zero depth entry. We also do water aerobics uh during before opening hours, so the older crowd can come in. Uh we have the lap swim for swimmers, we have basketball hoops, and we have all different play features. So we're really accessible. Like we pride ourselves on the family aspect where everyone can have a good time here. We just really enjoy having that family feeling when we're at the pool. Yeah, absolutely. How do you guys feel about the construction and the fact that the bridge actually is going to be open for the whole swimming season? I saw a lot of comments online from people that lived on the north side that you know they were really worried about that six-week stretch that they were going to, you know, have a real hard time getting the kids to swimming lessons and everything else. They got that out of the way, so you don't have to worry about that at all this year. Yeah. Yeah. I think we were definitely doing our best once we heard about the construction to kind of communicate with the our patrons and stuff like that, and people who come. We were posting on Facebook like detour maps and stuff like that, just kind of giving people a heads up because we know that it was a little, a little bit of an inconvenience. But now that things are starting to open back up again, we're hoping that people are feeling more willing and excited to come to the pool from Oshkosh, Winnakani, or even people in town. So we're really excited that things are starting to open up again and then getting people to come to the pool for the summer. Yeah, I think that was a good decision by the city, by the Department of Transportation, everybody that was involved to to move that up and shorten it up. It's gonna make the summer a whole lot easier for everybody, especially the pool. Yeah, for sure. So we also offer private lessons where you can be like one-on-one with a kid and it basically, you know, the parent signs a kid up for them, and they can kind of say what they want the lifeguard to teach their kid, and we really focus on that. And yeah, it's a great way to have like one-on-one swim lessons, especially if your kid is doesn't do so well in a big group. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So how many lifeguards do you guys have on staff? We have 21 lifeguards on staff. 21 lifeguards. Yes. Wow. And where do your lifeguards come from? All over. Yeah. Yeah. Which is I think that's my favorite things about it because we have kids from Omro, um Oshkosh West, FBL, Xavier. We get kids from all over, which is really wonderful to like meet people that you wouldn't meet usually. Sure. Um, it's cool to like see how their school is versus like how our school would be and all the different stories that they bring to the pool. And everyone gets along really nicely, which is really wonderful as well. Yeah. The pool gives an opportunity for many kids to be their first job as a lifeguard or what have you, teaches responsibility. You know, I mean, it's it's an important job um for the community, and I think it's a great stepping stone in life, if you will, for the for the kids to to start out and kind of get their feet wet. No, no time intended. Yeah. Our front desk workers, we open up job opportunities starting at 14. And so I know there's a lot of people, we had a lot of applicants, especially this year, with some other local pools shutting down. So we had a lot of applicants to get through. Um, we hired a 10 front desk, and then, like we said, we have 21 lifeguards. And so we were super excited to see all those different applications and stuff like that to be able to give people an opportunity. And even if we didn't have enough room to hire everyone, we were super excited that it was a chance to get them that interview experience and prepare them for potential future interviews. So I remember when I was a kid, I wasn't a lifeguard, but I can kind of remember somewhat envying the the lifeguard. Well, yeah, I I was younger than they were, you know, looked up to them. And you know, it's uh something about uh sitting up on the the lifeguard stand, I don't know what you call it. You know, a lot of the lifeguards, like you said, are so you know personable and um you know you guys are role models to to the children. So um good job to you guys and we appreciate what you guys do. So yeah, I definitely I remember when I was younger, I came here with my family a lot, and I always look up to the lifeguards, and so I was super excited um to be able to apply. And so I feel like a lot of us probably felt the same way. We can we grew up around here, and so we would come here as kids, and then getting the chance to actually work here and now be part of the management staff was definitely it was very special and very cool. So a lot of our staff, especially this year, uh, would always say in their interview how they grew up going to the Amaral pool. And now that we've uh they're finally old enough, they're working here. Uh, I know in my swim lessons I have a lot of kids talk talking about like, how old do I have to be to work here? Like, how do I do it? How do I go about doing that? It's like, oh, you're four years old, you don't need a job yet. But uh we really love that so many people they get taught some lessons here. I was taught some lessons here, and I'm a lifeguard here. Uh and we just have a lot of the community. This the pool is very community driven, and what my people who work here usually grew up around here. I would say also adding on that like aspect of family and people having history. Um, this year on our staff, we have a lot of siblings. So, for example, my little brother is working at the front desk and I'm his boss. Um that's fun. Oh, it is. Um, Vinny's a head guard, his little sister's a lifeguard this year. So it's cool to see like the families working together and the siblings, and it's cool to see my little brother have his first job be under me, underneath me as his boss, but also does him learn the responsibility of like dealing with money and dealing with showing up on time to your shift. And yeah, it's just so cool to get to watch his kids grow and not to pick on Vinny, but I met Vinny when he was like a little front desker and when he was had his first job, and now he's my co-worker on the management team. It's so cool to have to see him like grow up and he's a senior next year, which is so exciting. Yeah. So it's definitely cool. So, what does it look like? Um, you know, like day-to-day activity for the management team. Um, are all of you working every day of the week? And what are your what are your responsibilities? Yep. Yeah, usually we have two of us. We try and do either a manager and a head guard or two managers or two head guards. So there's always two of us. Um I know for opening weekend we scheduled all four of us because we're anticipating a pretty large number of people coming because the weather's looking pretty nice and people are just excited for pool season again. So, but usually it is two of us, and then pretty pretty basic day-to-day activities. We will open the, we'll get here 15 minutes before our lifeguards are scheduled, and then we'll open everything up, open the doors, um, get everything ready for the day, like our cash bags for our front desk workers. Um, and then we also throughout the day, we do emailing stuff. We answer questions that any patrons might have about any of our rentals or swim lessons or anything like that. And then if there is any sort of situation like behavioral or if there's an emergency, then we will step in and take care of that. But our lifeguards are really well equipped to handle that sort of thing as well. So, pretty much day-to-day tasks, ensure that everything is running smoothly, and then some stuff kind of just behind the scenes. But yeah. How long have you uh all been part of the management staff? You know, prior to uh obviously you're a lifeguards before that. How long did you serve as lifeguards and how long have you been management? So, like Addie said earlier, I climbed from I was a front desk in my first year and I did lifeguarding for two years, and I'm finally head guard. Nice. I did lifeguarding for four years and I'm head guard. Yeah, I uh started as a lifeguard and I did that for I think three summers, and then I was a head guard last summer and then this year manager because our previous managers went on to do bigger and better things. So I'm the same as her. We've been step in step with each other the whole time. Yeah, yeah. And that's gotta be fun coming back at year after year working with the same people and you know, yeah. Yeah, there's definitely excitement every year. I have like a few life because they like text me a countdown of this many days till opening day, and I'm like, wow, you guys are ready for us to open. Like, I'm not, but you are right, right? But it's so exciting to see us all getting excited to come back together and hang out all day, every day, for better or for worse. Um, we're really good at keeping each other calm and sane and not getting too tired and cranky throughout the day. They're long days for sure in the hot sun, but it's wonderful to have great staff that will talk in the office and we'll talk about those random things, or we'll play card games, or we'll just do fun things to keep each other having a good day. So sure. Like Brookside's such a fun environment to be a part of. It's like the best teenage job you could ever have, honestly. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So what are the hours of operation? I don't think we've touched on that yet. No, yeah. Uh we're open 12 to 7 to the public. Um, we have, as we said earlier, the private parties in the morning on weekends or after on the weekends. Uh swim lessons are usually around 820 or 8.40. Uh, they're four weeks long. We have three sessions. They're from Monday through Thursday. Uh and yeah, we do uh once it's five o'clock, we do cheaper admission because we understand it's sometimes you come home after work and you want to go to the pool, but it's not really fair to charge you as much money as it cost if you would swim all day versus just from the five to seven. It's a little cheaper, a little easier. It's usually slower around there. That's usually when we have like the most amount of families, just come right from dinner or something like that, and we just have a very nice evening. Yeah, and I was looking on your website, super affordable. I think you know, like $170 for the whole season for the whole family. You know, that's uh that's great uh entertainment, great uh you know, um community uh involvement or you know, being part of the community, coming to the pool, spending your time with other people. For $170 a month, you almost can't get entertainment anywhere else for that. So yeah, yeah. What's the cost per day? Yeah, so we have different prices based on if you're under, if you're three and under, you're gonna be free, um, or two and under, sorry. And then we also have your little kid age, so like four to seventeen, you're gonna be five dollars, and then adults are gonna be six, yeah. And then also senior citizens, um, 55 plus if you're a swimmer, that's just gonna be five dollars. But if you're a 55 plus non-swimmer, then you're free admission. So and then, like we said, prices will lower for the evening. So, what are you guys looking most forward to this season? It's a good question. It's a great question. I think for me, I'm definitely two things that are sticking out to me right now that I'm looking forward to are, as we mentioned, the birthday party. Um, we're really hoping that that's gonna be a big event to get a lot of people to coming to the to come to the pool and then even some of those small businesses who are working with us, getting them some business as well. And then also the 4th of July, that's always a fun one. We do the parade in Amro. And so it's super exciting to put together our flow and see how that comes to life, and then being in the parade and seeing all the people. And a lot of people get super excited when they see our float in the parade um because they love coming here so much, and then we're open from one to five on that day. So July 4th? Yeah, sure. Well, I'm looking forward to the whole season. I'm looking forward to learning about like a new role and just kind of being like a part of the management team. I think it's gonna be super fun. I'm also really excited for swim lessons because, like Addie said, they're really rewarding and it's just super cool to teach kids how to swim and watch them grow. Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree with Brooke. Uh, I'm super excited for swim lessons. Some mornings are awfully cold and you don't want to get in, and maybe like sometimes you can't teach a kid how to do the flips right, but it just feels so rewarding just being playing such a valuable role in that person's life. Yeah. Uh watch them grow up a little and just the money you spent on children to learn how to swim is just so vital and important. I think everyone should be able to swim. And I'm just really glad to be a part of that child's life in that way. Yeah, absolutely. Something that they're gonna remember really for the rest of their life. I mean, I've been talking about my childhood, looking up to the lifeguards, and I mean, I can I can still remember the pool that I went to just as plain as day, you know. Um, so it really is the the pool experience for our child really sticks with them for their whole life. So I completely agree. Yeah. Well, first I definitely want to praise Vinny and Brooke over there. They are honestly our best home instructors we have here. Um, they do a wonderful job of interacting with the kids, the kids adore them. Also, Vinny is our water books instructor, and he definitely was just thrown into the role. I said, go do this, and he's done it well. The ladies love him. Um, he does a great workout for them every morning, even though, like you said, it is very cold in that pool, and it's very early in the morning to be playing music and getting your body moving. But it is a wonderful job. Um, but I'm most excited to see our lifeguards grow this summer. Um, we have a very young staff with a lot of new lifeguards, and you definitely see their confidence grow as the season goes. So obviously, the first in-service they're like terrified because we're telling them to like save each other and putting scenarios where we have the lifeguards on stands and then they don't have the lifeguards or patrons, and we give them scenarios to act out, and they have to act on lifeguards to respond. Um, so they're terrifying. Honestly, I'll aimlessly say that I was terrified when I first did it. But I'm very excited to see them grow. I think it's a great job to gain your confidence and your authority in, and so far they're doing wonderfully. So I'm very excited to get to meet all of them and make them open up to us a little bit more and just become our friends. Yeah, and that's an interest interesting point that we haven't talked about really is the training aspect of the lifeguards and you know what it takes to become that first year or second year lifeguard, because uh obviously I'm sure there's different levels of experience when it comes to that. Um, so what does first year training look like for somebody that might be interested in becoming a lifeguard? Yeah, so I would say that our first in services are mainly our first one, like as like I mentioned earlier, is going to be our orientation where we just get all the everything in the pool set up. And then once we start our in services, we'll start over with our CPR, just making sure we're comfortable with that because that is such a huge piece of being a lifeguard. And then after that, then we'll get into the inwater stuff. So we'll do our active saves. our passive saves. And then if there were like a spinal situation, we'll do that as well. And so we just really work on those until we feel comfortable with them. And then like Addie mentioned, we'll incorporate scenarios with them to kind of get some like real life practice instead of just drilling it over and over. Sure. And so I feel like we definitely also rely on our returning lifeguards because they know how or they've been on our in services before and they know how it works. And so we kind of rely on them to set an example and then help out our newer lifeguards as well to make sure everyone feels comfortable and that we're all on the same page for saves and stuff like that. Sure. And all of our lifeguards are certified by Red Cross. They take a class we basically just do a run through of the class our first day, make sure everyone's on the same level because even though everyone goes through the same class, the same standards, expectations, that's they still all take different things from it. So we try to like really work on our skills. I can say personally that our lifeguards are super well trained. We work closely with uh the EMS, uh the first responders in AMRO. Just last night we had our first uh EMS training of the year where we had an ambulance, we saw how they operated. We kind of, it's a learning experience for all of us. A lot of the paramedics show up, see how we operate. They were impressed with our plan and we're impressed with them obviously they really liked what we did. We liked what they did. We really made it so we practice together so much that it's a very smooth machine. If anything goes on at the Amaral pool I can safely say that it will be responded to super quickly effectively and we will do it with very professional attitudes. Absolutely for swim lessons in the later classes we teach a lot of uh not necessarily like boating safety but we prepare you for all different situations in the water. We don't just teach you how to swim like laps but we teach you uh the different uh safety floats safety floats with uh flotation devices like life jackets we teach you what what to do in case of this how to swim with this situation so we do train you to train the kids like all different strokes and how to swim in the water but we also teach them like this the importance of water safety altogether. Sure because we know in Wisconsin I mean voting on the weekends and all the different lakes ponds rivers here a lot of things to do in the water here. Yeah absolutely um we have a family that just were like pool goers for a while and then the lifeguard started like interacting with their kiddos. They have three awesome kids that we just like started talking to on the stand and then the parents would come talk to us and they'd be like what are you doing in life and they would give us advice about like going to college and about like high school and relationships and all this stuff and it's just so cool that like strangers became so close to us and now they're like probably one of our biggest supporters like they bring us snacks whenever they think we need snacks they bring us chips dip they'll bring us brownies they'll bring us drinks um they have our connection within the Winnekani Christian fellowship so they host they're helping with the birthday party with the big splash contest um they're helping make us food lots of fun stuff so it's just cool to see how we've like grown so much with them. That's awesome. Yeah so we also have a really good concession stand we offer a lot of snacks that you can have throughout the day soda Gatorade water chips we offer ice cream candy just you know basic concession um concession stand snacks yeah awesome awesome very popular and not too expensive either right yeah absolutely so I want to thank you guys for taking the time to sit down with us and talk about the Amaral Aquatic Center or the pool if you will um make sure that you guys come down to the 25th anniversary birthday party on June 20th yes um going to be an exciting event for sure so thank you guys all it's been a pleasure and it was very nice meeting you guys. Yeah it was nice to meet you as well thank you