Most people in McCook know that the YMCA has been under construction for the past year, as part of a $17 million renovation and expansion project. 

The first phase of the long-overdue project is to renovate the pool. So on the day after the McCook High School swim and dive left for the state championship meet in Lincoln in February 2025, the YMCA pool was drained and demolition began.

The plan was to miss just a few days of practice the following season but finish out the 2025-26 season in a new pool.

As anyone who has ever done a construction project knows, there are always delays. Before the season even began, we learned that the completion date would be pushed back and then pushed back again, so much that an alternative plan had to be devised. 

Option one was to simply not have a swim season for either the high school or the YMCA youth team. That was a possibility and could have been the easy way out.

Fortunately, everyone involved determined that sacrificing a season was not the answer and would be a disservice especially to the seniors who have been training for this since they could manage to swim across the pool.

So a shout-out to Mitch Gross at the YMCA and Darrin Nichols at the McCook High School and everyone else who worked to make this past swim season work in McCook. This includes Y coaches Jennifer Rodewald and TJ Renner, who did the trip to the Gothenburg YMCA so they could also work with North Platte swimmers on the McCook team. 

My family got to spend extra time together this season with my husband, Jon Graff, as head coach for the high school team; my son, Erik, serving as assistant coach; my last child, Eli, swimming and diving; and me driving the bus to North Platte and Eustis for practice. 

Midway through the season, we realized that we should have been adding up the miles we were putting on the vehicles to reach a pool. A guesstimate is that Erik was doing 1,000 miles a week between the Y and high school practices and everyone else was around 700-800 miles.

It demonstrated that anyone swimming this season was dedicated to the sport. Kids gave up part-time jobs because there simply wasn’t time before or after practice to fit in a job. Coaches gave up other activities because most evenings were spent on the road. Parents put together meals not just for their family but for the entire team. We didn’t have a big team because there was a lot of sacrifice involved this season but those who stuck it out had a lot of heart and perseverance.

Ironically, despite not having a home pool, the Bison swimmers and divers had what was arguably their best season, especially the men’s team. They brought home team trophy’s from meets during the season which had never happened before. They had the most swimmers competing on the final day of the state championship meet in Lincoln than they had ever before. And nearly every event on the McCook record board has been broken by a 2025-26 swimmer. 

We didn’t just thrive in the pool; we grew a lot out of the pool too. 

We now know how to serve a 20-person buffet on the first three rows of a school bus. I learned that a roaster setting on top of a cooler on top of a seat will go flying into the middle walkway on a sharp turn. And that sometimes we really are smart by leaving chili in the plastic storage bags in the roasters until I get to the school to warm it up, thus not cleaning up chili from the walkway.

We grew to love the drive through Southwest Nebraska, especially the road through Maywood and Curtis to Eustis. Without having to worry about snow this winter, we grew to appreciate the rolling hills, the deep valleys, and the steep climbs. 

Personally, I looked for a Great Pyrenees dog on a farm to the east of Moorefield because I saw it once standing in the drive way and hoped it would come back to watch me drive by again. It never returned but I still held out hope. 

We watched for the bison north of McCook by the Red Willow State Recreation Area, hoping they would be near the fence line as we drove by. Usually, they were just specks off in the field but part of it was just knowing they were there. 

Although I don’t want to go through that type of season again, there was likely more good than bad that came from our time on the road and it wasn’t just achievements in the pool. The kids got to know each other better than they would have just meeting on the pool deck each day. They learned that struggles actually produce character and ultimately success. And perhaps most importantly, they know that nearly any meal can be made in a slow cooker.

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This column is dedicated to Lynne Kinne, who passed away suddenly last week. A long-time educator, she was also a coach for the the McCook High School swim team, only stepping away in recent years. But she continued to coach the swimmers participating in the Special Olympics. 

On our return trips this season from North Platte, we would pass Lynne on the highway as she personally drove her swimmers to practice every week just like everyone else. She had a passion for swimming, but more importantly Lynne had a passion for helping those with special needs be just like everyone else. 

And she was perhaps the most enthusiastic person this past summer walking in the lazy river at the McCook Aquatic Center. She was there nearly every evening, sometimes chatting with other or just walking by herself, but appreciating everything a pool has to offer. Lynne will be missed.