Sycamore natatorium’s plan clears final hurdle
MONTGOMERY, Ohio — On Jan. 4, the Sycamore Board of Education voted to proceed with a contract to build a new natatorium at the high school on Cornell Road, as part of the Master Facility Plan. An effort that began in the summer of 2019 had cleared its final hurdle on Mark Seger’s birthday.
“Serendipity. It was meant to be,” he said.
Seger is a 1979 Sycamore graduate, having attended district schools since third-grade. He played varsity soccer as a member of two Eastern Hills League champions, and was team MVP as a senior. The association with the soccer program continued while Seger was a student at University of Cincinnati – he was an assistant coach for the junior high team and public address announcer for the varsity.
“Over the years, I was involved with Sycamore Arsenal Soccer as a head coach, referee, referee coordinator and also a board member of the club,” Seger said. “I enjoyed coaching more than anything, and I still have great friendships with my teammates, fellow coaches, and kids that I coached.”
Involvement with the swimming and water polo programs began in 2005, when the family moved from the Lakota School District to Montgomery, so that sons Jonathan and Christopher could compete for Sycamore. They started with the Windwood Swim Club and then joined the Sycamore Flying Fish, which used the high school pool as its home. The chose Sycamore, he said, “because it was the perfect-size district and it was ‘home.’”
The Seger boys became top-level swimmers, qualifying for multiple Ohio Junior Olympic meets. Since swimming became their main social activity, Mark Seger joined the Flying Fish parent board, serving as first vice president, then president. There, he noticed several challenges facing the program.
“As with many sports, team resources were always a limiting factor to deal with. With a swim team, the most limiting resource is pool time,” he said. “The user demands for time at the Sycamore High School pool included all of the school programs (junior high, junior varsity and varsity swimming, diving and water polo) as well as Flying Fish club swimming.”
Sycamore’s pool was six lanes, so Seger began to look for solutions. In 2008, he attended a USA Swimming Build-A-Pool Conference in Colorado Springs. Building a new pool was not feasible at the time, he said, so he approached representatives of Harper’s Point Swim and Tennis Club and the then-Montgomery Swim Club about putting a bubble over their pools in the winter. Those discussions did not work out.
The Flying Fish relocated to Blue Ash YMCA in 2009, due to a decreasing number of senior (ages 15-18) swimmers. Blue Ash had three pools (two indoor and one outdoor), but they were aging, with equipment and pool decks needing upgrades.
“This reinforced my understanding about the lack of elite aquatic facilities in our region, and strengthened my desire to help find a solution to our community’s lack of resources,” Seger said.
In 2012, Seger and partners decided to sell the business he had founded. That gave him the time and resources to focus on his goal of expanding aquatic facilities in the community. He approached Sycamore and the YMCA, and made them aware of his financial commitment to the project.
“I was thinking big. I wanted to help build a 50-meter pool that would be the premier facility in Southwestern Ohio. There were only a few indoor 50-meter indoor natatoriums in the area, at Miami University and St. Xavier High School, and only a few outdoor 50-meter pools, at Blue Ash, Countryside YMCA, M.E. Lyons YMCA,” he said. “Conversations with Sycamore and Blue Ash YMCA started and stopped several times, but the timing was never ‘just right’ to make my dream become reality.”
All that time, Jonathan and Christopher continued their careers. Jonathan was a member of four consecutive Greater Miami Conference champions, and qualifying to the state meet as part of a relay team his senior season.
Christopher swam three years on varsity and was a member of the last Sycamore team to win a GMC title in 2016. He also began playing water polo, which, Mark said, “is much more fun to watch than swimming.”
Sycamore unveiled its Master Facility Plan in 2018, and Seger again began advocating for his dream facilities. He formed an advisory group of experienced club coaches to provide input on the design of a 50-meter pool, and hired a national firm to perform a feasibility study.
Cost proved prohibitive (estimated near $20 million), so they scaled back to a 25-yard eight-lane indoor pool proposal, at the Blue Ash YMCA site. However, the YMCA of Greater Cincinnati was unwilling to dedicate any resources. Instead, the Segers donated to the city of Mason’s new indoor 50-meter natatorium behind the high school – a gift Mark said gave him satisfaction, but didn’t meet his goal.
That goal came closer to reality in October 2020, when he and Sycamore Schools reached an agreement to build the new 25-yard natatorium. The Segers pledged $3 million toward the eight-lane facility with a capacity of more than 400; that agreement was announced at a February 2021 board meeting, with the understanding that the natatorium would be one of the last phases of the Master Facility project.
Waiting, though, meant rising costs for materials as well as finding previously unknown “construction complexities,” and the estimated cost rose to more than $10 million. The Segers increased their donation to $7 million, and the district agreed to pay the rest.
Sycamore’s water polo team invited Mark and Saundra Seger to the high school in early January and presented them with a home-made “thank-you” card.
“Seeing them and knowing that they were just a few of the thousands of kids who will enjoy this pool was so gratifying. That made the long journey so worthwhile,” Mark Seger said.
Dan Carl, Sycamore’s swim coach, said the new facility will be “priceless for the advancement of our swimming and diving programs. The extra space will allow us to continue to have junior high, junior varsity and varsity and diving programs as well as youth club swimming back in-house all under one roof.”
“This will also allow us space to host our Larry Lyons Invitational, and possibly the Southwest District Classic (largest high school swim meet in the country), Greater Miami Conference meet, and sectionals. This provides an exceptional opportunity to showcase our community.
“I am not sure how we could ever show our gratitude and say thank you enough to the Seger family.”
Boys water polo coach Nicholas Hellwig shared similar thoughts.
“We are one of the oldest water polo programs in Ohio and have some solid success on both the girls and boys side, but to continue to grow and compete, the facilities needed to match the effort that players and coaches put in,” he said. “This new facility will allow us to be able to train better in conditions that will mimic if not be the location of the regional and state tournaments.
“Our in-season tournaments will draw stronger teams from not just across Ohio, but the entire region. It will allow us to host the tournament for our former player Jose Cerda (who passed away in 2010) at the pool that was his home. We will be able to bring in camps and clinics with Olympians to draw more and more people to our schools. It will continue to put Sycamore aquatics on the map as a powerhouse destination.”
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