On Centre: Philipsburg

Small town has big asset

By Lori Falce

For lots of kids in the Philipsburg-Osceola Area School District, summer doesn't start the day school gets out. It's the first day they break through the cold, clear water of the Clear-Centre Swimming Pool.

There is no community pool in Philipsburg, and swimming at Cold Stream Dam has been prohibited for decades. But just a few miles down the road, in Philipsburg’s sister borough of Osceola Mills, there is an ice-blue jewel that beckons kids to splash their summer days away.

“This is the last thing we have,” says Brett Albert, who has managed day-to-day operations at the pool for years, doing everything from maintaining the pH balance of the water to making perfect corn dogs in the concession stand.

“We don’t have a high school anymore. We don’t have a junior high anymore. We don’t even have Little League anymore. But we have this pool.”

Keeping it open and available has been a continuing struggle for the small borough that owns it and for the Osceola Recreation Committee that operates it.

The unapologetically independent community that still maintains its own school mascot and “Eat ’em up, Osceola!” motto despite decades of inclusion in the P-O district, is proud and protective of its aquatic asset, in place since 1971.

“So far, the generosity in this very fiercely proud town has shown to be a strength. It is what makes Osceola Mills what it is,” says the ORC’s Shawn Inlow, who is in what he calls “a fundraising steel cage match” to get the money for physical improvements to the facilities.

The pool is in murky water when it comes to funds. As a municipally owned entity, it’s not eligible for the kind of assistance that the Moshannon Valley YMCA receives from Centre County United Way. And in a small borough like Osceola Mills, the needs of the pool have to come after a long line of requirements for other things, leaving the ORC on its own for much of its moneymaking.

The pool subsists off admissions and memberships ($4 a day, $60 individual season, $100 family season), concession sales, donations and grants.

Developing a master site plan is allowing the committee to pursue grant funding they hope to use to augment the physical amenities and increase the draw of the pool. They hope to hear about a $20,000 grant for a walkabout trail in the fall, with “sorely needed” playground equipment for the park area next on the wish list.

But the kids don’t know that there are things the pool could use, things it could improve. They know that on a hot day, they will stand outside the gates until someone opens it, that they will splash and shriek and jump and dive until someone says “everybody out of the pool” and locks up again. And they will be back again tomorrow.

This weekly column features news and happenings from the Philipsburg area. Send questions, comments and suggestions to Lori Falce at sendlori news@gmail.com.