Are there "swimming deserts" in the US?

**f1refl1es!** · September 26th, 2017, 11:39 AM

I've been pretty surprised to find how little connection there is between my local community and the Masters community. I joined USMS just recently, and am far from familiar with the swim world or with the USMS for that matter.

When I first looked over the list of pools, it seemed pretty sparse. (I was swimming at an outdoor pool and only started looking for other options when I realized it would be closing for the season). But as I have done some research on my own, with Google and so on, I have found a couple of other pools, and yet it seems they are focussed on school-age swimmers. I'm not too surprised at THAT, but what is shocking is that there are a couple of Masters organizations around my region, but it is basically as though my county dropped off of the map -- seems there's virtually nothing, here.

Now, I am not really confident I could be active with a Masters program, myself. I am still new to swimming, I never swam competitively and I'm in my sixties now. But I wondered whether for some reason, there are places where Masters swimming just isn't a "thing." (We do have some "food deserts" around here, too - places where there is no fresh food grocery outlet within reasonable distances. I'm not sure the two correspond, though)

**jpetyk** · September 26th, 2017, 12:36 PM

I looked on the USMS places to swim and found a long list of choices based on your profile location. Hope this helps.

http://www.usms.org/placswim/mapsear...te=MD&units=mi

**f1refl1es!** · September 26th, 2017, 03:00 PM

Yeah. There are PLENTY of places to swim, in my area (although, on that is listed as "12 miles" from Bowie MD, shows up on Google directions as *20* miles away -- I don't lack for pools.

But what I was puzzled by is that Masters swim is invisible at most of the pools. I occasionally see very focussed lap swimmers in the pools. If I can catch one of them before they dash off, maybe I am just going to have to ask them. Maybe this just isn't a place where people usually try to be sociable.

**Karlene** · September 27th, 2017, 02:38 PM

There are definitely swimming deserts in the US. We have a vacation home in Arkansas. Arkansas has fewer USMS registered swimmers in the entire state (145) than our masters team in Houston (195).