Aquatics

Six links, one ordinary question

“Can my seven-year-old have a swim lesson at a time when I can also swim laps?”

On the published page, answering that means leaving it. Here is the actual trail:

Open Clarke Memorial and read the lap-swim lane table. Lap swim, got it.
Back. Open Swim Lessons and Classes — level descriptions, but no times.
Follow Group Lessons out to the registration system. A second website.
Expand each of the seven levels one at a time to see which have sessions. Seven more clicks.
Back out and open Private Swim Lessons — a separate calendar again.
Remember the pool also has a Masters team in it. Open Swim Teams, then the team's own site, then its Practice Times page. A third and a fourth website.

Four websites and about a dozen clicks — and at the end you are holding four separate schedules in your head and comparing them yourself. The calendar above answers the same question by looking at Tuesday.

Swim Centers

Larkey Park

This pool and spray ground are open during the summer.

Already above: closed until Memorial Day

Clarke Memorial

Enjoy three outdoor swimming pools located in Heather Farm Park.

Already above: all three pools, all week

Programs and Rentals

Swim Lessons and Classes

Seasonal options align with quarterly registration windows.

Already above: every level, with its bay and lane

Pool Rentals

Dive into the ultimate celebration with our poolside picnic rentals!

Already above: which weekends are bookable

Swim Teams

Walnut Creek Aquatics is proud to be home to four wonderful teams.

Already above: Masters, in the water beside you

Summer Recreational Swim Passes

Access the pools and spray ground during rec swim hours.

Already above: the hours the pass buys

These are exactly the six cards on the published page. Nothing has been taken away — the calendar just means you no longer have to open them all in order to plan a Tuesday.

The four teams

Aquabears

Year-round USA Swimming age-group team. Eight practice groups.

Masters

Adults 19–90, competitive and fitness. Thirteen practices a week.

Aquanuts

Synchronized swimming, year round. Home of Olympic champions.

Walnut Creek Swim Club

Summer recreational swim team, in its 55th year.

What one calendar knows that six links cannot

1. The other twelve lanes

Walnut Creek publishes lap swim as a table of lane counts. It never says what the rest of the pool is doing, because the city does not run it: the Masters team publishes its own practice times, on its own website. Put both on one calendar and the arithmetic closes exactly.

Time	Public lap swim	Masters	The 20-lane pool
5:30 – 8:00 am	8	12	20
8:00 – 10:30 am	20	—	20
10:30 am – 1:00 pm	8	12	20
1:00 – 4:00 pm	14	—	20
7:00 – 8:00 pm	8	12	20

The 8:00–10:30 block, where Masters is out of the water, is the one time all twenty lanes are yours. No published page says that today.

2. Which water a lesson is actually in

The wading pool runs three teaching bays side by side. The city's registration system knows which bay each class uses; the aquatics page has never had anywhere to say so.

Bay or lane	Levels taught there	Tue & Thu start times
Wading — East	Level 2 Starfish	4:30 · 5:50 · 6:30
Wading — Middle	Level 3 Seahorse	4:30 · 5:50
Wading — West	Level 4 Lobster	4:30 · 5:10 · 5:50 · 6:30
50m Lane 1	Level 1 Guppy, Level 5 Seal, Level 6 Dolphin	5:10 · 6:30
50m Lane 2	Private lessons	4:30 · 5:05 · 5:40 · 6:15

3. That a season ends on a date

Larkey closed after Labor Day and its calendar closed with it, because the season was entered as dates rather than as a sentence. Nobody has to go back in September and edit “open weekends only through 9/7” off a web page, and nobody has to retype the summer next May.

Questions for the aquatics office

Everything here was transcribed from what Walnut Creek publishes. These are the places where the published sources disagree, go quiet, or where we had to make a call — each one is marked on the calendar entry itself.

ConflictEvening lap swim: Monday–Thursday, or Monday–Friday?

The Current Lap Swim Hours box says Mon–Thu 7–8pm. The lane-allocation table directly below it says Mon–Friday for the same band. Entered as Mon–Thu.
ConflictGuppy and Seal are booked into the same lane at 5:10pm

Class #85243 (Guppy) and #85260 (Seal) are both recorded on 50m Lane 01, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5:10, across all four session dates. That is the registration system's own data. Which one is actually in Lane 1?
ConflictSaturday 11:00 — lessons or lap swim on Lanes 1–2?

The allocation table hands lanes 1–14 to lap swim from 11:00 on weekends, while a Saturday Guppy class and two private lessons sit on Lanes 1 and 2. Pool Relay suggests shifting lap swim to lanes 3–16, which is presumably what happens on deck — the page never says so.
OursHow many lanes does Masters actually get?

The team publishes times but never lanes. We entered 12 — the balance of the 20-lane short course after the city's published public allocation. It closes perfectly in every weekday band, but the Saturday 9:30–10:45 practice has no published allocation to bound it at all.
GapIs water exercise running?

The page lists Tue/Wed/Thu at 8:15 (shallow) and 9:15 (deep), then says “unfortunately we do not have an instructor at this time.” Those slots are deliberately not on the calendar — an event holds water no matter what its description says. Is the water still reserved, or released to lap swim?
GapWhere do the Aquanuts and the Swim Club train?

Masters and the Aquabears publish practice times. The Aquanuts and the summer Swim Club occupy real water on a real schedule that nothing public describes — see their pages above.
ConflictSenior Aquabears at 5:30am — which water?

The team publishes Senior practice Tuesday and Friday, 5:30–7:00 a.m. At that hour the city’s lane table gives all twenty lanes to lap swim (8) and Masters (12). Those two practices are not on the calendar until someone says which schedule is right.
OursAquabears lane counts

The team publishes times but never lanes. We split the 20 short-course lanes between the groups in the water: Senior and Purple on Lanes 1–10, Gold on 11–20.
GapWeekend recreational swim — still running, and in which pool?

The page lists recreational swim under both the 50-meter and the 25-meter pool. We put it in the 25-meter pool, because the allocation table already commits 14 of the 20 short-course lanes to lap swim at that hour.
OursWhen do Larkey's weekday sprayground hours run?

The $3 sprayground-only hours (Mon–Thu, 10:30–12:30 and 4:30–6:30) are published without dates. We used the Memorial Day–Labor Day season the swim pass names, stopping before Labor Day itself — the center was weekends-only by September.