YMCA project is making McCook on the Move

From early morning workouts on the fitness equipment to swim lessons, everyone has a different “why” for the importance of the YMCA.

Courtesy photo

If you wonder if McCook is on the move, just look at all the things happening or that are in the works.

There is the new city pool, which remains open for another two weeks on the weekends. There are new events, including Third Thursdays through October, bringing shopping, music, food and fun to Norris Avenue and Cars Under the Stars drive-in theater, which is showing Pixar’s “Up” Saturday night at the Red Willow County Fairgrounds. There are numerous housing projects, helping alleviate an issue that is a topic at every discussion. And there is the ballfield project, which has grown to include space for not just new baseball fields but new businesses and housing and green space for the community.

All of these projects are building excitement for the future of McCook and Southwest Nebraska.

But perhaps one of the most needed and most overdue projects is the McCook YMCA renovation and expansion project.

This $16 million campaign is designed to bring the McCook facility both up-to-speed, with much needed repairs, and to expand the building, to provide more space, programs and possibilities than is currently offered.

McCook’s leaders had the foresight to bring the YMCA to McCook in the 1920s, constructing a building on Norris Avenue that was used for nearly 60 years. Everyone who used the facility has memories, nearly all involving the pool in the basement and the spiral staircase between floors.

Then in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, McCook again stepped up to build a new modern facility next to the high school. Opened in 1982, that building was built with a 20 to 30-year lifespan. With more than 40 years in the facility, it is showing the wear and tear of constant use over the past four decades.

The YMCA will be celebrating its 100th anniversary in McCook in just a few years. There are only a handful of businesses and organizations that can say they were around a few decades ago much less a century.

This fund-raising campaign is an ambitious goal to not only renovate and expand the current facility. But this isn’t a luxury or a desire; this is a necessity if we want our community to grow and thrive. This project is needed if we want our community to be here 100 years from now.

While the city of McCook helps with youth sporting activities by maintaining the public green spaces, the YMCA serves as the community’s recreational department. It oversees nearly all youth and adult sports programs. It provides the space and instructors for group fitness classes.

And this Y project doesn’t just affect those living in McCook.

With the only indoor pool for 60 miles in any direction, the Y attracts swimmers from St. Francis to Arapahoe to Curtis. And the youth and adult sports programs provide recreation for residents of McCook, as well as most of the surrounding towns.

When I moved to McCook in 1995, the YMCA was one of my first memories. I got married on a Saturday and played in the adult volleyball league with my new husband and in-laws the following Tuesday. And I was coaching youth soccer the following spring, despite not having any kids in the league.

And since then, all of my children have spent countless hours in the pool, either as a swimmer and diver or a lifeguard or both. When the kids were younger, every Wednesday night was spent at the YMCA swimming pool, as our inexpensive outing with friends and their kids.

This is my “why” for the Y fund-raising campaign: because of what the Y has meant to me in the past and what it means to our future. Each and everyone of us has a “why” this particular asset is important to McCook and Southwest Nebraska and Northwest Kansas.

As the YMCA embarks on this fund-raising campaign with the hopes of beginning the renovations this fall, it is important for each of us to consider how we can help and why it is important to the community. Maybe you benefit directly from the YMCA, learning how to swim, playing a sport, attending an event. Or maybe you benefit indirectly because your business needs employees, who need the YMCA.

Everyone has a different “why” for the Y and in the end, each of us can be part of helping make McCook on the Move.