Lincoln Park Pool

Great little cute lovely pool :) with great coaches :) Pool and around is clean and quite. People are respectful.

We highly recommend Alameda Swim Pool Association. They not only teach your kids to swim (and love it), they are a GREaT deal. It’s $ 385 or so for the year for the entire family. There are two pools, Franklin and Lincoln. My kids have taken lessons at Lincoln for two years now. Lessons are twice a day, M-​F, all summer long. The pools are warm. You don’t have to sign up ahead of time so if you need to take a break or want to take 2 lessons per day, you can do either. There are family swim times M-​F. It’s a volunteer association which is why you get a great deal. Each family will do one swim duty per year (e.g., gate duty checking in families for a couple of hours, etc). Prior to ASPA, my children attend Canyon Swim School in El Sobrante. They are known for their program. I was willing to continue the drive there if Canyon didn’t think ASPA would be as good. They gave ASPA a good recommendation, we tried it and are here to stay. Yes, some teachers for the younger set are young but that’s the beauty of the program. Kids who want to teach one day learn the ropes from older ones and so the cycle continues. The main teachers are either high school/​college or grad students and they are great and coached by Coach Pat, one of the «founders». We love Sharif, Frankie and Madison and the whole crew. Their programs are fun but rigorous. Kids will learn and need to tread water for 5 minutes in the deep end as well as pass other tests to earn their «fish». Kids «graduate» being very water safe. I suggest you stop by Lincoln pool at Lincoln park one morning and ask to observe the classes. We paid about $ 130 for 8 30-​minute lessons PER kid at Canyon. We have three kids. ASPA is a steal!!!

I am biased — I admit it. This was the rival pool when I worked at Franklin and even though they are essentially the same (two pools, «locker» rooms, BBQ area, kid cage, attached to a park), it was an unwritten rule that if you were a Franklin pool kid, you hated the Lincoln pool kids. Call it the swimmers version of West Side Story, I don’t know, but that’s how it was.
I went to Lincoln pool a few times growing up (if you were a member of Franklin, you were of Lincoln as well) and ONLY came here for swim lessons when our favorite instructor switched to this pool. It is literally across town from Franklin, so it’s kind of a pain to get over to from my house.
The only real difference is Lincoln is set more inside the park while Franklin is right on the street. I give Franklin the extra points on this fact because since we were on the street, when the ice cream man rolled by, you were alllll over it. =)