MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Vic Riggs admits he's like a kid in a candy store these days.

And who can blame him?
 
His West Virginia University swimming and diving program is about to get the biggest boost in its 63-year existence when the new Aquatic and Track Complex at Mylan Park is expected to be completed sometime no later than the spring of 2019.
 
As with all major construction projects, the exact date is still a moving target. But Riggs said he's finally beginning to get excited about a collaborative effort with the community that has been talked about for years, and finally became public on Nov. 5, 2015 when the announcement was officially made.
 
Now, two years later, the footers are in place, steel is going up and the facility is finally beginning to take shape.
 
"I think the biggest factor in this is the reality of the whole situation," Riggs said recently. "We've talked a little bit about it a couple of years ago and we were kind of given the okay to use it a year ago in recruiting, but now this fall we finally took kids out there and showed them the job site and I definitely think it's creating an interest that has been positive for us."
 
Being a swimming and diving coach at West Virginia University has meant having an easel with architectural plans at your disposal at all times.
 
Since the program's inception in 1954, competing in substandard facilities has been the norm.
 
Until the WVU Natatorium was constructed for $1.8 million through state funding (roughly $8.5 million in today's dollars), the swimming and diving team trained and competed at the Mountainlair pool located behind the old football stadium where the downtown loop exists today.
 
It was an awful place from the moment it was opened.
 
"Really, really bad," is how former swimming and diving coach Kevin Gilson remembers it. "The heating was terrible towards the end. The filtration system was terrible. We had people jump off the bridge that went across the back of the old stadium. You're in there and all of a sudden you'd see a leg coming through the roof."
 
There was also a small, 20-yard, four-lane pool in Elizabeth Moore Hall down the street that was used for women's physical education that Gilson sometimes could utilize when the Mountainlair pool was being serviced, but it was an impossible situation for him to develop any momentum with his program.
 
When Gilson was hired in 1967, he was told plans were in place to build a new swimming facility and eventually when the WVU Coliseum was constructed in 1970 there were renderings that included an indoor track and indoor swimming facility.

But the price tag to do this was astronomical.
 
"The actual plan was when the Coliseum was built there was supposed to be a tunnel going into an indoor swimming facility, which was supposed to be nice," Gilson recalled. "And then off the other side was supposed to be a tunnel going to an indoor track. Well, right away when the bids came in they cut out the indoor track and the swimming pool."
 
Yet Gilson kept those renderings and he continued showing recruits the plans until a new swimming facility was finally approved in the early 1970s.
 
"While I was recruiting I said, 'Here are the plans; here is an article about it' and I just kept showing it to them," he laughed.
 
At the time, the new Natatorium was the life preserver Gilson sorely needed. Like Riggs today, Gilson was overcome with excitement when the new facility was under construction. However, there was one aspect of the new facility that really concerned him, and still bothers him to this day - the overall size of the pool.
 
It was not constructed to 50-meter specifications, which was becoming standard at that time.
 
"I got to know the architect that was designing the pool and I think I was the only one on the planning committee who was pushing for an Olympic-sized pool," he recalled. "The architect told me the money was there to build a 50-meter pool by eliminating some of its frills, particularly the ceiling."
 
So instead of having a standard Olympic-sized pool, West Virginia swimming and diving got ornate cedar roofing and expensively painted walls. Still, the new facility was a boost to Gilson's program even if it became obsolete the moment the final brick was cemented.
 
"It made it real easy to recruit and when you get good recruits your teams start doing well and they bring in others - kids from their high schools and that kind of stuff," Gilson explained. "It really impacted the program."
 
It sure did.

Soon, he was winning Eastern championships and developing national-caliber swimmers. But as was the case with the old Mountainlair pool, the Natatorium eventually became a liability when prospects with national-level aspirations learned more about its limitations.
 
West Virginia once considered expanding the Natatorium toward the WVU Coliseum when Sergio Lopez was winning Big East championships and developing first-class swimmers in the mid-2000s, but, again, the price tag was simply too expensive.
 
That was the situation Riggs stepped into in 2008 when he was hired away from Georgia.
 
"A lot of our sport is collegiate and a lot of our sport is at the USA level and kids that have those goals want to have the opportunity to train long-course and train in an environment they feel is going to help them reach those international teams and those goals as well," Riggs said.
 
Clearly, that was an impossibility with West Virginia's current setup.
 
Then, when Oliver Luck became athletic director in 2011, he sized up West Virginia's facility situation and realized immediately that many of its venues were substandard - even for Big East-level competition.
 
When the decision was made to pursue Big 12 membership in 2012, he knew something had to be done immediately with all of West Virginia's facilities and right near the top of his list was the Natatorium.
 
After studying several different alternatives, Luck determined the best possible solution was what Virginia Tech had accomplished with its aquatic center constructed in nearby Christiansburg, Virginia, in 2010 - a collaborative effort with the community.
 
Mylan Park was deemed the most suitable location, but that is where Luck left things when he assumed his current role with the NCAA in December of 2014. It was up to current director of athletics Shane Lyons to bring all of the entities together and sift through the many complexities of a project of this magnitude.
 
That is why it has taken two full years from the time the project was originally announced to where we are right now with dirt being moved and steel rising out from the ground. It's been a long and sometimes complicated process, but through the incredible foresight, vision and patience of many - not to mention a very generous $15 million contribution from the Hazel Ruby McQuain Charitable Trust, the beautiful, new aquatic complex is taking shape.
 
"I'm so excited and I know the team is as well," Riggs said. "We're really thankful to everyone for coming together to support this and I know it's been a long haul. It's a huge project, and we can't thank the people enough for their support."
 
What West Virginia University and Monongalia County is getting is a state-of-the-art, 50-meter pool with eight lanes and spectator seating for approximately 1,200, according to Riggs.
 
When it's completed, he's going to have enough room on the deck to train his entire team at the same time, with locker rooms big enough to accommodate a typical-sized college roster.
 
"This is the first place I've ever coached where I didn't have 50-meter water and from a coach's perspective, it significantly impacts your coaching and the things you can do," he admitted. "The biggest example for us is in the mornings. We train different groups and in the afternoons we have to have two separate starting times and we don't get to train as a team. We simply can't fit everyone in here at the same time."
 
As expected, Riggs said he is already noticing a boost in recruiting, similar to what happened to Gilson's program in the late 1970s when the Natatorium first opened.
 
Riggs is hopeful the new aquatic complex will do for Mountaineer swimming and diving what Monongalia County Ballpark has done for Randy Mazey's baseball program, or what Dick Dlesk and later the Dreamswork Field practice facility did for Nikki Izzo-Brown's women's soccer program in the mid-to-late 2000s.
 
Last year, Mazey's Mountaineers snapped their 21-year NCAA Tournament drought and Izzo-Brown's program has evolved from an annual NCAA Tournament participant into one of the premier soccer teams in the country.
 
"We've talked with the kids and I've talked with the staff about this," Riggs said. "They're not building this for us to be where we are right now. We need to go in there and produce at the highest level. It affects everything from just walking into your facility, to morale all the way up to being able to compete in a first-rate facility.
 
"You can't hide bad strokes long course; it just doesn't work," he added.
 
Riggs said construction work is about a week ahead of schedule right now, but delays can pop up at any time when the weather turns much colder in December, January and February.
 
"Right now, it's great that the steel is going up because the biggest thing is the weather," he said. "I don't know if global warming is helping us or not, but it's helping me right now because they're working really hard to get it covered. Once they get it covered it doesn't matter what the weather does."
 
The entire project, designed by Paradigm Architecture and constructed by March-Westin, includes an outdoor track and cross country venue. The price tag for everything is approximately $45 million.
 
"Their plan out there is really, really good," Riggs said. "It's not just track and swimming. Mylan Park's goal is to eventually host Special Olympics and we're in full support of that. At the end of the day, we're there and we're one of the major tenants of the facility, but programming is going to be able to go on there for track and swimming on the community side as well.
 
"It's going to be a game-changer; plus, there is so much that is going to be built out there."
 
Indeed, a game changer not only for Morgantown, Monongalia County and North Central West Virginia, but also for West Virginia University swimming and diving as well.