Canyon Springs High School swim coach Chris Price talks with swimmers during practice at the Municipal Pool on Bonanza Road Friday, March 4, 2022.
Wednesday, March 9, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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Rancho High School’s swim team practices at Municipal Pool in downtown Las Vegas, about 2 miles away from campus.
But without a ride, that distance is insurmountable for most teens whose only other option is a half-hour walk through a route that they and their parents have safety concerns about.
After the Clark County School District cut busing last month for all sports teams that practice off campus, citing its continuing driver staffing crisis, the 73-swimmer team at Rancho plummeted to about 20 — assuming everyone can get to practice. On Friday, coach Tiffany Pinkerton flipped through her five-page roster to see that 11 people made it out.
Rancho captain Ava Valenzuela, 17, made a sharp appraisal.
“Look at us. We’re Rancho High School,” she said, letting her words hang in the air before expounding. “You can’t expect schools like Rancho to afford charter buses.”
While no CCSD schools have pools on campus and all are now without district-provided buses to and from practice at scattered public pools, the ultimate impact is uneven. Buses are provided on Saturdays for meets.
Rancho is situated in one of the valley’s poorest neighborhoods, where more than a third of residents live below the poverty line. Formal swim lessons, private club teams and a family car are out of reach for many students.
Liberty High School, which serves families in a middle- and upper-middle class part of west Henderson, lost one swimmer who can’t drive and whose parents can’t get off work to take him to the pool at Henderson’s Silver Springs Recreation Center, about 8 miles from their campus, said coach Kenny Belknap. The team is otherwise intact with about 35 athletes.
Families are able and willing to shuttle kids. Older students have their own cars and can drive themselves and friends. Coaches discourage the latter but know it happens.
Last week, one of Liberty’s athletes was in a collision as he drove home from practice, Belknap said. The boy survived but was too sore to swim for days.
Belknap knows it could have been worse. He was a student at Centennial High School in 2005 when two tennis players died in a wreck on the 215 Beltway as they drove to a match.
“I’m worried that the district is setting up that type of tragedy to happen again,” he said.
Though he’s frustrated, Belknap thinks back to Del Sol High School, school in a working class neighborhood just east of the Las Vegas airport where he previously taught and coached. He said he would support buses being made available to teams that are the furthest from pools, or that come from lower-income areas, to even the playing field and maintain the diversity of competition that he said he liked to see.
“That opportunity’s taken away at this point and it’s unfair,” he said.
“Already these kids have missed out on opportunities because they just don’t have the financial means to get them. Why is the district in the business of exacerbating that? Public education’s supposed to be the great equalizer in society.”
CCSD has faced thin bus driver staffing all year, reflecting a nationwide trend.
“Our priority is to ensure students are at school for academic instruction,” the district said in a statement acknowledging the sports bus cuts. “For the spring season, CCSD is prioritizing athletic transportation for competition meets. As a result, the district is not able to provide daily transportation for teams that practice at off-site facilities.”
Belknap points out that rides to meets do athletes little good if they can’t practice.
Canyon Springs High swim coach Chris Price said that after pandemic closures lifted, kids wanted to get out and try new activities. Swimming turned out to be one of them — around 30 students were cleared to swim for him this spring, giving the North Las Vegas school its biggest team in about 10 years.
Five swimmers showed for practice Friday. One got a ride from his parents. The others caught rides from an uncle, a godmother, a sister’s boyfriend.
The swimmers who can’t make it now are crushed, Price said. “I’ve told them, when you can make it, make it, ”he said.
Canyon Springs also swims at Municipal Pool, which is more than 4 miles away from its campus at Alexander Road and Fifth Street, so walking isn’t feasible — although one of his freshman girls did try. She walked 2 miles from her home, but her mother put a stop to that after finding out she was walking alone down bustling Las Vegas Boulevard North.
Price said his principal and athletic director were willing to pull from their school’s limited general fund to get charter buses for the team but couldn’t find enough for daily rides. There also aren’t enough district-owned vans to go around, Price said. He said he found out about the busing cuts days before practice was to begin in mid-February.
Canyon Springs sophomore Josh Moore, 15, has a goal to make the state meet this year. An exceptionally polite boy who is also involved in the school’s Junior ROTC program and dreams of being a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, he said it’s hard for his mom to get him to practice when she has two younger children she also needs to taxi around.
“My coach, he does very good at bringing out potential in me,” Moore said.
He knows other people want to be at practice but can’t.
“I know swimming brings smiles to lots of their faces,” he said.
Valenzuela, the Rancho captain, said she ha some peers who could be missing out on college scholarships.
“A lot of these people are great swimmers but they don’t have reliable transportation,” she said.
Rancho has managed to have a plucky swim program in spite of its students’ economic challenges. In 2019, the Rams girls placed a respectable 7th out of 14 teams in the regional meet. Last year, in a season abbreviated by COVID-19, they sent 14 boys and girls to state.
At Del Sol, Belknap took athletes to the state meet four of six years. Previously, most had only ever splashed around in shallow play pools.
“The kids can do it, it’s just a matter of having access,” he said. “If you get them there, they can do it.”
