Bobby Hicks Pool

Bobby Hicks is my all time favorite place to swim laps in Tampa. It is the only place in the area where you can swim the Olympic distance, full size pool. It is amazing how quickly a workout goes by when you don’t have to turn quite so much!
The building itself is nothing to write home about, but it really doesn’t matter. It is a city owned pool after all, so the budget just isn’t there for fancy renovations. I could care the least — as long as it stays open, I’ll be happy. The only bad part about the pool is it closes for the winter. Due to budget cuts (I think), they can not heat the pool, so they close it come October, just about through Memorial Day. It opened a couple of weeks before memorial day this year, but for limited hours.
There are showers, places to change, and plenty of sitting areas if you are more into spectating, rather than swimming. I love this pool!

When Interbay closes if you’re swimming in South Tampa at Parks & Rec you’re swimming at Bobby Hicks. Nestled away in a residential area of South Tampa that is right around the corner from MacDill, it takes me all of about 10 minutes to get here if I take the Leeroy Selmon Expwy. As previously mentioned, it’s an older building I would guess late 60’s early 70’s. It’s a fairly large monstrosity. The facilities have a large changing area with plenty of shower stalls and restroom accommodations. The pool is huge, really big. They don’t have it set up olympic, but the space is there, the lanes I believe are set up into 25 yard lanes, so that’s 72 if you’re counting miles. They have concrete stadium seating and it goes fairly high, so if you’re looking to do other exercises such as stair climbs, and other body weight work, it’s totally possible. If you dive they have several diving boards. I believe you can get a parks and rec season pass for around $ 15.00, just ask the lifeguard they can help you, everyone is extremely friendly and always happy to help. I rally enjoy swimming at this facility.

This pool has a real throwback feel for me back in the early 90’s there was a pool back home that we always went to and Bobby Hicks remind me of that pool.
First thing that was a good sign that i was gonna like this pool was they didnt charge us to swim today and it was four kids and three adults which wouldve been $ 50 but they let us swim for free maybe becuse it was my birthday. The locker room is huge plenty space to change clothes atleast a dozen showers stalls and sinks… but no lockers!!! So we took our clothes out to the side of the pool.
The pool itself is huge it was sectioned in sections for the freelance swimmers and for the folks who are swimming laps and then… THE DIVING BOARDS! Now me and my brother said we was gonna go try it and that we did as we walked to it we saw the water was 14 deep! So i was a lil shooked but i did dive in away but man that ish is crazy beacuse nobody wants to go to the bottom of the pool but it was fun. and i wont do the board any more but i will be back to the pool!