The new campus watering hole.(Newsroom)

Long gone are the days when only the college varsity swim team knew where the pool was located. Across the nation, universities are offering more than the textbook six-lane lap pools at their athletic facilities. Today's students can soak away their midterm troubles in a vortex pool or momentarily forget about their take-home exam with one trip down a water slide at the campus leisure pool.

"The students love it," says Sandra Peppel, aquatics program manager for West Virginia University in Morgantown. "I think the student body wishes we were open more."

Unlike community family centers, which are often geared to children, university leisure pools offer a more mature, sophisticated gathering space with grottos and waterfalls for those 18 and up.

"Kids today grew up with family aquatics centers," says Scott Hunsaker, president of Counsilman/Hunsaker & Associates in St. Louis, which has built more than 91 university projects. Hunsaker says schools are appealing to this group by offering leisure pools for students, rather than just competition venues for athletes.

The leisure pool is also drawing previous couch potatoes to aquatic activities. "We've witnessed individuals do fitness swimming who traditionally would not be," Peppel says.

University of Texas-Tyler's facility was built as part of the school's recent transition into a four-year institution. Along with on-campus housing and other student amenities, the leisure pool adds to the modern student lifestyle in an attempt to draw prospective students to the state's fastest-growing school.

The campus is abuzz about the leisure pool at the University of Toledo, too, says Jeff Witt, assistant director of the university recreation center. "The philosophy was to try to enhance student life on campus and students staying on campus," he says. "It's a ...