Get your swim trunks ready, because the inaugural New Haven Swim Club is now officially here.

The University of New Haven may not have a pool on campus, but that didn’t stop club President Matthew Ruggiero from pursuing his dream of swimming at the collegiate level.

“I had been swimming since the first grade all the way up until high school. When I arrived at the University of New Haven I initially thought that I would be done with swimming for good. As my freshman year came to a close I began to realize how much I missed swimming. From that point I decided that there had to be some way I could form a swim team and find a way around not having a pool here on campus” said Ruggiero.

The university technically does have a pool, but it is only open to residents of Forest Hills and is not big enough to accommodate competitive swimming. With determination and motivation, Ruggiero found other students that shared the same passion for swimming, but also shared the same dilemma that discouraged former swimmers in the past.

“It actually wasn’t hard at all getting people interested in the club. The very first interest meeting I ended up having over 60 people show up. I think many people realized that there are other alternatives to not having a pool on campus and it showed” said Ruggiero.

When there is an interest or need for something, students seem to join together to make things happen and that is exactly what happened here.

The Swim Club is an up and coming club team, so they are restricted to only practicing as a team, but they hope to compete with other teams in the future. Hopefully sooner rather than later. The Swim Club currently doesn’t have a permanent location for future meets. Their current practice pool at the May V. Carrigan Middle School does not have diving blocks, which are vital a swim meet. The organization are looking to possibly have fundraisers to pay for those diving blocks, so they could call May V. Carrington Middle School their official home in the future.

The club held their first meet and tryouts on Tuesday, Jan. 23 and will look to keep growing and swimming as the year goes on. The Swim Club will join women’s club soccer, women’s club volleyball, and the eSports club as the universities newest club sports in 2018.