Nostalgic Buyers Surface for Pieces of School Pool

The old swimming pool at Valencia High School in Placentia brings back fond memories to many in the city. Now, a piece of that history can be cherished forever--for a price.

Bulldozers soon will rip apart the 52-year-old pool and fill it in, but Coach Mike Guest is chipping away chunks of tile and other parts he plans to sell in a fund-raising event to buy equipment for the school’s new pool.

So who would buy a hunk of old pool?

John Quintana, for one. On Friday, the 1971 Valencia graduate and former water polo player got himself a 6 1/2-foot-long section. It cost him $200.

“I learned how to swim in this pool,” said Quintana, 34, who remembered his first somersault from a diving board that was nothing more than a wooden plank covered by burlap. “There is some history in this pool.”

“If you think ‘Placentia,’ if you think what keeps people together, it’s Valencia High School. There are trees out here from before I was born. I don’t know; it’s just nostalgic,” said Quintana, now a New Jersey resident who was in town Friday.

Tiles Full of Memories

Guest knows how much the pool has meant to swimmers and water polo team members who put in countless hours of grueling practice there. So he’s undertaken what he calls “a junior archeological study.” The floor of a boys’ bathroom by the old pool is now covered with pieces of tile, all numbered, Guest said, “so I know where they came from. I know there are kids I’ve had who would want a chunk.”

One former swimmer, Gail Durham, told him: “ ‘Coach, I scratched my name in one of the block tiles. I want that tile.’ So I chipped it out and will save it for her.”

Bill Equitz, 19, wants an E from “DEEP END,” he said, “because E is the first letter in my last name, so I want to put it on my wall.”

And if it’s not too expensive, Equitz would even like to buy the old lifeguard towers for his backyard. The towers and the broken pool heater are going to the highest bidders, Guest said.

“To me, there is a lot of sentimental value in that pool. I swam in it for six years. I’ve had a lot of cuts and bruises from the old pool,” Equitz said.

Pushed for New Pool

Boosters of the city’s aquatic programs have pushed for years for a new pool. During a Placentia Unified School District meeting last year, guest told officials, “The pool is about ready to fall through the ground.”

Last May, the school board approved funds for new pools at Valencia and El Dorado high schools.

El Dorado students soon will be using their pool, and by next month construction at Valencia is expected to be completed. But there is no money in the budget for equipment such as water polo goals and starting blocks, Guest said. This gave rise to the fund-raiser.

On Friday, an alumni association also began to take shape as John Quintana, his brother Gene, 38, class of ‘67, and Charlie Turnbell, 33, class of ‘71, gathered by the pool, remembered old friends and discussed plans for contacting them about the fund-raiser.

Through the efforts of the alumni group and the Aquatics Booster Club, Guest hopes to raise more than $5,000 for the equipment.

Meanwhile, John Quintana plans to give his chunk of tile to Rick Pickrell, now of San Diego--”the only one to ever make All American” in swimming at Valencia. He also plans to take 14 black tiles from the bottom of the pool, polish them, attach them to an old team picture with a plaque and give one to each of his former teammates.

Staring at the Bottom

“We spent hours staring at those tiles-- hours ,” Gene Quintana said.

Andy Wisniewski, 18, wants a 1 off the 11-foot mark, because 1 is his number on the water polo team.

His mother, Lola Wisniewski, president of the Aquatics Booster Club, said the high school senior told her last year that he would “like to take a sledgehammer and go down there and take some cement--to say that he had a piece of the pool.”

But, thanks to Coach Guest’s fund-raising effort, she said, “my son wants a chunk now--forget a piece.”