My (short) athletic career

An article in Sunday's AZ Republic, on Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard, got me to thinking about my own swimming experiences.  I spent a lot of time swimming growing up, and thanks to years of lessons had beautiful strokes, but never swam competitively on a team.  That changed when I went off to college at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL in 1968.  NU had a PE requirement that could be satisfied by joining the Swim Team (note: the women's team was so desperate for any warm body that there were no try-outs - you just signed up, so I did.) 

 I went to every practice (no small feat, considering the women's dorms were on the south end of campus and the gym was at the north end, a mile away, and the entire stretch was literally right on Lake Michigan...NOT fun in the winter!) and did my best (which, not surprisingly, wasn't very fast.)  And of course I had to 'learn' how to do the racing turn (never did quite get that down.)  Our coach, Mike, was a member of the men's team, and he had to be really frustrated that we really only had one swimmer on our small team who had any real chance of competing against the other Big 10 teams.  (I also should mention that NU, unlike most Big 10 schools, had a relatively small pool of students to draw from.) 
But I digress.  Suffice to say that I didn't fare very well in competitions (OK, OK, I came in last in every race.)  By the end of the swim season it was getting pretty old (not to mention downright embarrassing) and at the last meet I begged Mike not to make me swim.  He wasn't very sympathetic and told me if I didn't swim I wouldn't get my gym credit.  Well, I'd put in too many hours to give up that lousy credit.  Let's just say I was pretty pissed when I hit the water.  But pissed can be good - I came in 4th that last race, beating out 2 swimmers - a personal best!  Surprising how good a 4th-place finish felt!

 Speaking of the swim team, my friend Tim was a butterflier on the men's team.  All I heard from him that year was about a Big 10 swimmer named Mark Spitz. When I went to watch one of the meets I thought Mark's stroke was somewhat choppy and peculiar, but we all know that only a few years later that 'peculiar' stroke won him a whole bunch of Olympic medals!

FYI my friend Tim, who is only 5'4" inches tall (but with shoulders the size of a football field from years of butterfly competitions) was an excellent competitor but just didn't stand a chance against much taller Mark.