With Easter approaching next weekend, it’s also time for the annual Underwater Easter Egg Hunt at Winchester-Clark County Parks and Recreation.

For years, the natatorium on Wheeler Avenue has hosted the event for local children, who can hunt eggs while playing in the pool. This year’s event begins at 1 p.m. April 20. For $5, a child will be able to hunt for eggs and then spend all day in the pool if they want.

The Sun recently sat down with aquatics director Lily Caudill to talk about the event and her work.

Winchester Sun: How long have you been in Winchester?

Lily Caudill: I’ve lived in Winchester my whole life. I love it here.

WS: How did you get started at Parks and Recreation?

LC: I started at Parks and Rec swimming. Jeff Lewis wanted me to be a lifeguard here. I was 15 at the time and I said there’s no way I can do that. I worked with him to learn how to swim better and I became a lifeguard. I loved it. I fell in love with it. I loved the old aquatic director’s job. I thought that was so cool. I worked my way up from lifeguard to lifeguard instructor to head lifeguard to assistant aquatics director and then to aquatics director. I’ve worked here eight years and full-time for two years.

WS: Were you always into swimming?

LC: I have always been a really active person. I’m actually type 1 diabetic and started swimming to stay in shape. I fell in love with it. I love it for exercise. I love it as it is. I try to tell people that don’t have that competitive spirit that they can swim anyway. It’s just fun to do.

WS: What do you do as aquatics director?

LC: I manage the life guards. I teach the lifeguards and all the staff here in CPR, first aid and AED. I do all the mechanical parts of the pump room. There’s a whole room back there of parts to run the pool. I do way more chemistry than I ever thought I would in high school. I wish I’d paid better attention to chemistry. I do it every day now, which is odd. I also coach a few swim teams here during the seasons.

WS: How many swim teams will come here and practice?

LC: It’s awesome. We obviously have George Rogers Clark High School. We’ve got the Sailfish. They are a little more competitive. We’ve got the Mount Sterling team. We have the Wahoos, which is our Parks and Rec team. Winchester Country Club also uses our pool, so we have five that come here on a regular basis. And STRIDE comes here too with their Special Olympics team.

WS: How busy does the pool stay?

LC: It’s very busy in the summer because we have the swim teams. We’ve usually got at least two teams going on. We have the summer day camp come in. We have lifeguarding classes in the summer. There’s not that many instructors in the area so we’ll have people come here to take lifeguard classes that work in Richmond, Georgetown or even Wolfe County. They’ll come here, take the class and go out. Lots of people come here to recertify.

WS: How else is the pool used?

LC: A lot of people to water aerobics here. We have a pretty big homeschool group in Clark County and they’ll come use the pool during the day. Some sports teams come in and do water training. We had a fly fishing group come in for a couple months, which I thought was kind of funny. We have kayaking classes here some times. I love our SCUBA diving group here. We have a couple programs like the Easter egg hunt that keep us busy. The haunted swamp is probably my favorite because we shut the whole pool down and turn it into a swamp for three days. The scuba divers are down there. It’s so much fun. We do a lot of swim lessons here.

WS: How big is the Easter egg hunt?

LC: I think we had like 70 last year and I think it was close to 300 that came through the haunted swamp.We’ve done the Easter Egg hunt for at least seven years. I try to create a very non-competitive event. That was my goal when I became aquatics director. I hated going (to Easter egg hunts) and some kid getting all the prizes. What we do is put all the eggs in the pool and have the kids work together to get all the red eggs or all the blue eggs or all the yellow eggs. The older kids are helping the younger kids. It’s so nice to see them working together to do something. At the end if they get them all, they get a prize. The lifeguards get really excited and they’re helping as well. I tell the kids it’s a million eggs.