Three potential swim meets are going to give competitive swimmers the opportunity to swim at the Austin Municipal Pool this summer.

Mark Vininski, founder and owner of Atlantis Swimming Federation (AFS), said they are taking baby steps by holding three meets this year, but he hopes to turn it into a sponsored series by next year.

The biggest reason for hosting the meets in Austin is the outdoor 50-meter Austin Municipal Pool.

Vininski said there’s about 10 50-meter outdoor pools in Minnesota and most cities don’t want to host swim meets.

“Austin is the first community, in Minnesota, that has a 50-meter outdoor pool, that’s opening their arms to Minnesota and USA Swimming,” Vininski said. “In the summer, we want to swim outdoors. We want to swim meters as much as we can.”

The catch is to fundraise the money to add a few missing key items essential to a swim meet, such as starting blocks, lane lines and rollers to store the lane lines when they are not in use.

Vininski said the pool is lined for eight lines, but it could be 10 lanes and they’re looking at purchasing 10 starting blocks. The 10 needed starting blocks will cost about $50,000 since they are stainless steel and powder coated.

When the blocks aren’t in use at the outdoor pool, they’ll be installed at Ellis Middle School for swim teams to use. Vininski said he hopes to have businesses from Austin sponsor them and get their name on them.

Organizers also need tents for timers, scoreboard and timing systems. They’ll borrow benches from the city.

“Atlantis looks at this as an opportunity to help Austin get better and us get better, that’s how we want to look at this,” Vininski said. “Helping everybody create a better swimming environment so more kids can swim.”

Vininski hopes swimming teams will come from all over the Midwest to compete. He said a lot of teams are already interested in coming to the meets. He said there will be a morning and afternoon session with ages 12 and under swimming in the morning and 13 and over swimming in the afternoon.

“A lot of kids right now are working to get the Olympic trial cut, [and] trying to get swim times so they can go to the dream meet, the Olympic trials meet in Omaha, Nebraska, which is the week before the Fourth of July, a seven day meet,” Vininski said.

He said they most likely won’t give out awards for the first two meets, but the meet in July is one where swimmers can qualify for the Minnesota state meet.

Swimmers sign up with their team, which must be USA Swim sanctioned. Vininski plans to have the meet sanctioned by Minnesota Swimming and then swimmers’ times can be logged into a database. College coaches can use that database as a recruiting tool.

Vininski started Atlantis Swimming Federation in 2010. Originally, his swimming team started as the Faribault Stingrays, but they started to get a lot of kids from around the area and he thought they should change the name.

“I thought we shouldn’t be called Faribault StingRays anymore, so then I thought we could be the stingrays, but there’s 20 other stingrays so we have to come up with something different,” Vininski said.

They decided on Atlantis, because no other team has that name, he said. Out of that came Atlantis Swimming Federation (AFS), or “always swim fast,” Vininski joked.

AFS offers lessons from ages four through high school age and they get former swimmers coming back from college to practice in their free time.

AFS is apart of Minnesota Swimming, which is apart of USA Swimming, or the Olympic team, Vininski said.

Teams can register at www.teamunify.com/mnsst/