Phase 2 update: Woodlands and Queenstown Swimming Complex
Dear parents,
As the news on Singapore moving into Phase 2 this morning, all of us at Odysseus Aquatics have been having several townhall meetings with Singapore Swimming Association. At the same time, ActiveSG and SportSG have released regulations for us to abide to during this period.
In summary, here are some of the updates for the usage of public swimming pools and our restrictions:
There is a maximum of Gross Floor Area based on 10 sqm per person, or 50 people per location, whichever that is lesser (For swimming complexes, it maximises out at 50 for our locations). This number is inclusive of accompanying parents and caretakers.
Coaching hours are between 9AM to 6PM for all days, which is largely not suitable for our classes as most swimmers are in school between these timings, except for weekends. We are not allowed to run organised group classes between 6PM to 9PM like what we usually have for weekdays.
Group ratio is limited to 5 person to 1 coach, the ratio is INCLUSIVE of accompanying parents (that means, if every child has an accompanying parent, we can only accommodate 2 swimmers in each group so as not to exceed the ratio)
Swim clubs and coaches are required to submit requests of allocations on a first-come-first-serve basis to try to get pool area to accommodate our swimmers. Each of these allocations only last for 4 weeks and there is a possibility that we will not be able to have the same allocation the following month, if Phase 2 persists.
The situation now:
We have since submitted requests for pool allocations but unfortunately, ALL of our applications are unsuccessful because it was on first-come-first-serve basis, and the system crashed during the requests. While we were able to push our forms through, we are speculating that we were not one of the firsts to snatch the slots and hence, we were not allocated to any slots eventually.
Even if we do get 100% of the slots, we would only be able to accommodate a maximum of 30 swimmers out of our 500 swimmers. This will inevitably cause a lot of unhappiness because it will be difficult for us to achieve a win-win situation for our swimmers, our coaches and our school. Even then, we were ready to try to work something out, but since the applications were rejected, we have no choice but to wait out and plan our next steps.
What’s next?
Unfortunately, we are unable to tell what is going to happen next. It all depends on whether Phase 2 eases up over the week and regulations if regulations eases up enough for us to commence lessons again. Otherwise, it will certainly look like our break will continue to extend until Phase 3.