Kids hit the water seeking floating Easter eggs in Henderson pool

Chris Monte stood in swimming trunks after emerging from a pool that just a few minutes earlier was filled with kids ages 6 to 8, including his daughter Kennedy, excitedly grabbing floating plastic eggs for Easter Sunday.

Kennedy, 6, who like most of the other 50 or so kids in the pool had a basket to gather the eggs, picked up a lot but at one point saw some of them drop back into the water.

“She was losing a bunch of them, but then all the kids were giving eggs to each other, and everything felt very sweet,” said Monte, 38, a Henderson resident.

It was about 2:30 p.m. Hours earlier that morning Kennedy found her Easter basket at home, the beginning of “tons of Easter stuff” they planned for the day, Monte said.

More than 200 kids and their parents went to the annual “Egg Dive” for Easter Sunday at Heritage Park Aquatic Complex in Henderson at 310 S. Racetrack Road, with an entry fee of $5 per kid, according to Jordan Fletcher, 29, recreation coordinator at the complex.

It was different take on the usual land-based Easter egg hunt.

Hundreds of empty, multicolored plastic eggs were poured into the therapy pool, the smaller of the two pools in the huge indoor facility, as the kids leapt into the fray to claim the floating objects that were used to claim small prizes such as spinning tops and party blowouts.

“We like to do things a little different here in the aquatic section for the city of Henderson,” said Demetri Tsiralidis, 22, recreation services leader for the city, which hosted the event. “We like to do a lot of these things to kind of incorporate more water safety.”

Over at the larger pool, used for competitive swimming, Henderson resident Penny Bichsel watched her son, Wiley, 6, take a plunge off a diving board.

“We did the usual eggs hunts on land, yesterday and today,” said Bichsel, who in lieu of giving her age described herself as “young at heart.”

“But this is out first egg dive in the water, and he’s a water bug,” she said of her son, adding that Wiley got his Easter basket that morning. “While we were at church, the Easter bunny came.”

Christopher Hartley, 46, also from Henderson, was at the edge of the therapy pool, peering down at his 10-year-old son Sebastian in the water.

“This gives us something great to do on a Sunday afternoon instead of sitting in front of the TV, and we’re just out here enjoying ourselves,” Hartley said.

The aquatic center has held the “Egg Dive” indoor for the past seven years, but this year it was expanded outdoors into the parking lot to include some inflatable games and food trucks, Fletcher said.

Katie Martinez, 39 of Henderson, said her niece, Novaled, 6, loves the water and swimming, “so when we heard of this, it was right up our alley. Spend an hour here, get energy out and go home.”

Contact Jeff Burbank at jburbank@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0382. Follow him @JeffBurbank2 on X.