Is there an aquatics angel somewhere on the Coronado landscape? High up in the Coronado Shores looking out to sea perhaps? Or a First Street homeowner looking over the bay? A Cays resident gazing out at the canals?

Five years ago a committee of local citizens, school board members and swim coaches began meeting to consider whether a pool complex might be built at Coronado High School.

A wave of enthusiasm took hold of the school community that year. “I’m in!” read the stickers pasted on car windows and bumpers. After all, in the boom times of 2003, all things did seem possible, and Coronado, surrounded by water with three yacht clubs and a junior sailing program, was definitely a spot where aquatic training made sense.

There certainly appeared to be ample demand. After all, water polo players could only get practice time at 4:45 a.m. at the city pool; masters swim classes, water aerobics and kids’ swimming lessons filled up fast there. “Any parent knew that if you didn’t sign your kids up for swim lessons the same week the brochure came out, you weren’t getting them in,” said one veteran mom. Wouldn’t it be great if Coronado kids could learn to swim as part of the physical education curriculum?

Today at The Brian Bent Memorial Aquatics Complex (BBMAC), middle schoolers and high schoolers are doing just that, with new waves of swimmers hitting the water each period. After school, middle school kids practice three days a week in the new swim club and the water polo team has plenty of practice time. There are private swim lessons for all ages, as well as lifeguard classes and Red Cross certification courses.

Meanwhile, the city pool has been able to increase its hours for free family swim time which was once squeezed into short time segments.

The BBMAC was built on the site of the high school’s former tennis courts. In a game of musical chess, the courts were relocated to the site of the former district offices on D Ave, and new district offices were built on district-owned land at 201 Sixth St. The pool had a soft opening last December and was dedicated last May. It honors Brian Bent, a three-year letterman and co-captain of the CHS water polo team that won the CIF title and a UCLA graduate who helped guide the Bruins to back-to-back NCAA championships. Bent passed away in April of 2006 from complications of an enlarged heart while living in Taipei, where he was teaching English to Taiwanese students.

The complex includes a 50-meter Olympic size pool and a 25-yard instructional/ therapy pool, office, maintenance facilities and bleachers. Solar panels provide energy efficiency. A curvilinear bench done in mosaic tiles by local artist Kirsten Green; above it are glass-blocks bearing the names of community members who have donated to the pool.

Like Bent, Coronado aquatics has sent several Coronado High students to college, many on athletic scholarships, playing water polo, including Sean Cook, now playing his freshman year at Pepperdine. There was Scott Syverson at Princeton, Layne Beaubien at Stanford, Jesse Smith at Pepperdine and hundreds more, including young women such as Elizabeth Hopkins at the University of Maryland and Kelly Phelps at the Arizona State University.

While there have been lots of successes to point to, things aren’t going as swimmingly in the financial arena. Operating costs, once estimated at $250,000 a year, have come in closer to $40,000 a month. The actual figures for expenses and revenues are an ever-evolving target as costs for water, electricity, chemicals and salaries ebb and flow in the start-up year.

Carrie Fernan, hired in August, is the BBMAC aquatics director, in charge of developing programs and marketing the facility to swim clubs and organizations locally, nationally and internationally. Fernan was formerly with the city of Coronado as aquatics director, leaving that position in 2006 to join San Diego State University to serve as aquatics coordinator for the school’s new Aztec Aquaplex.

Fernan has already met with early successes, bringing in swim clubs during their semester breaks this December and January from Nebraska, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, the University of the Pacific and as far away as Canada and Sweden.

“They’ll be staying at local hotels,” she said, “So the business community will also benefit and so will the city’s TOT [transient occupancy tax].”

“We’re in the process of working on a contact with Total Immersion,” says Fernan. “They run two-day clinics where they video tape swimmers, critique their strokes and then get them back in the water to correct their strokes.”

She’s also ushered in a new website, www.bbmac.org, which shows the availability of private and semi-private swim lessons, the schedule for morning and evening water aerobics classes, and regular open-swim hours.

Individuals can sign up for memberships, with 30-day punch cards beginning at $30 for kids and $90 for adults; annual family memberships of unlimited use are $700 for a family of three, adding $100 for each additional family member.

Coronado Unified’s school board president Doug Metz, who joined the board in 2004, recounts the history of the financial difficulties. “I felt the vision of a school pool was a good one,” he said. “We’re an aquatics community, sure. But I wanted the promoters and the district to ‘show me the money’ in three ways: Did we have the funds to build it? Did we have an endowment to back up the initial start-up costs? Did we have a business plan that assessed the competition including the city pool?”

School board members Bill Seager and Julie Grazian formed a committee and worked with the Islander Sports Foundation, which presented a plan at a 2004 school board meeting. Metz saw that two legs had been met — $8.3 million to build the pool complex from Community Development Agency funding and pledges for a starting endow - ment. But Metz didn’t find the competitive analysis that would guarantee a flow of revenue to support the annual operating costs at the time estimated at $250,000 and therefore voted against the pool, ending up on the losing side of a 4-1 vote. At a subsequent vote on construction, Metz was impressed with an endowment that far exceeded projections at $1.2 million, the majority of it from the Lee Mather family (Lee and Phyllis Mather were Brian Bent’s grandparents) and he went with the board majority in a 5-0 vote.

Several months prior to the opening, the board contacted the Sports Foundation about their business plan which “had not been vetted.” As the Sports Foundation worked their plan, months went by. Meanwhile, pool operating costs came in at higher amounts than had been projected.

Last April, the Sports Foundation announced that it was defaulting on the loan to the district, admitting it had not recognized the start-up time necessary to attract groups from outside Coronado and to develop programs that would be viable for residents that would not compete with the city’s operations.

And so the school board moved to “Plan B,” releasing the Sports Foundation from any obligations, and writing a new contract with the BBMAC Foundation and its board to market and run the pool. That board is composed of Tom Sullivan, president; Dave Landon, vice president, development; Joe Cook, vice president, operations; Jane Simeral, treasurer and Missy Cook, secretary.

Missy Cook said that the BBMAC is now beginning a new round of fundraising, initially targeting the original “I’m in” pool backers. The school board is allowing the BBMAC to borrow against the endowment up to $600,000, allowing time to achieve certain levels of operational efficiency. The BBMAC’s financial operation of the pool is built on a three-legged stool which consists of rental revenue from user groups, including various clubs, physical therapy programs and public use; fundraising and interest from the endowment. Now in its fourth month of operation, BBMAC’s revenue-to-expense ratio is approximately 50 percent. The board anticipates raising $50,000 to $100,000 annually and points to other recently constructed pool such as Coggan Pool at La Jolla High School, which have similar targets even though they receive some funding through the school district.

Metz says the school district ultimately wants to retain ownership of the complex, rather than turning it over to the city. Likewise, City Council members aren’t in favor of taking on a second city complex, but some have indicated they might offer some financial start-up assistance. Other ideas that have been floated are a partial tax or the city buys the tennis courts from the school district and the proceeds from that sale directed toward the aquatics program.

What’s really needed, urges Missy Cook, are some major donors: Coronadans who have recognized the benefits of swimming in their own lives and want to pass on that legacy to future generations. There are still naming rights available — the scoreboard will go for $250,000; lanes in the 50-meter pool are $10,000 each.

“We know there are some angels among us,” says Cook, “and we’re calling out to them.” Angels can call the BBMAC at (619) 437-0227 or go to the “Donate” form on the web site. The site takes most major credit cards, and Fernan would just love to see a $1 million donation on Amex come across her desk.

And just think of all those Amex frequent flier miles that will give those angels wings!