Buy the Dartmouth Swim Team on eBay

I understand that some of you that benefited from a 4 year program and are favor of keeping them. But I swam for a 2 year program and I don't think swimming at the masters level or at the adult USA level will suffer if some of the community college teams in California are dropped. As I stated before, LA and Orange County have several community colleges less than 10 miles of each other that have a swim team. And even in my day,few swimmers at the JC level swam at the four year level for 2 more years. Four year programs that give scholorships are different from two year programs that don't. Only two swimmers of note swam at the JC level, Shirley Babashoff swam for the Golden West mens team and Lenny K swam for Santa Monica during his freshman year,mainly because his high school team didn't have a swim team. But these are big exceptions to the rule. I didn't say that I wanted them to drop the JC programs but its better to drop then than Division one programs where swimmers are at national level or near national level.

Once again it comes down to the bottom line, why do schools offer one program and not another, recognition and support with the ability to attract more potential supporters. For the most part someone would go to Cal Tech not for the sports programs but for the education (most of their sports teams are club anyways). Cynthia's example of Cal State schools is a good case. All Cal State schools charge about the same amount for a years education (whether you go to Cal State LA, Cal State Fullerton, Cal State Long Beach, San Diego State, etc). San Diego State still has a footbal team, Long Beach axed theirs a few years ago and Cal State LA hasn't had one for as long as I can remember - the reason San Diego's football is still around is it's seen as being successful, Cal State Long Beach wasn't. At the time Long Beach cut their football program they still had a swim team and water polo team because these were deemed successful. The school I graduated from did not have a swim team or water polo team - I could have gone to another school and probably swam and played polo but they didn't offer my course of study - so I chose my education over sports. I think there are more swimmers that have come out of community colleges than you think Cynthia - I believe these are a good support base for USMS, so removing these prograsmm would also undermine the growth of USMS ( one of my fellow team mates at a community college was ranked fairly high in the 50 free even going to the Olympic Trails - also correct me if I'm wrong but I also believe Michael Collins of Nova went to Santa Monica).

The programs that a college supports, academic or athletic, says a lot about the priorities of that school. A school that thinks that a good education includes both intellectual and physical development supports a variety of academic and athletic programs. A school that believes that training a person for future life includes establishing good intellectual, moral, and lifestyle habits will set up a program that does that. I mentioned several college programs that I believe properly integrate academics and sports. These schools do it at all levels, from the club/fun teams of Cal Tech, to the good teams of the Ivy League, to the superior teams of Stanford. Another school, such as Dartmouth, that drops a sport because they find it difficult or expensive to be 'competitive' at a particular level says quite a bit about its priorities. Perhaps it should redefine what makes a successful athletic program. But for now we know that if it can't win, it won't play. As for some other schools - surely most people see the hypocrisy of dropping sports so that the 'revenue' sports of football and basketball don't have to take cuts? (What is the revenue for?) And then these schools blame it on Title IX? I hope every athlete goes to a school for the education, but I know it is not true. The 'farm team' role of colleges in football and basketball subverts the very purpose of these institutions (at least until they recognize 'football' and 'basketball' as degrees of study like Biology or Philosophy.) I fully expect all athletes in college to maintain a rigorous academic program. I also have nothing but respect for those athletes (such a Phelps) that have forgone a college education to dedicate to their sport. No one argues that schools don't have to make choices, but the choices of a Cal State school should and will be different from an Ivy League school.

Another reason why we should support the different components of our "sport". The growth and well-being of masters does depend on the growth and well-being of "youth" swimming (USA, Y, summer league) as well as college varsity programs. Many of our coaches in masters swimming come from varsity swim programs at all levels. Furthermore, we depend on varsity programs for coaches and pool time. Our experience in New England is that college swim teams (and Y teams) have made tremendous contributions to our growth. I think all of the components youth-varsity-masters are connected and need each other to thrive in the future. I speculate that very few USMS members swam at the varsity level but have an impact on our organization well beyond the demographic numbers. If I do a quick scan of NEM volunteers the vast majority have some college swim experience; and an even greater number of our coaches have similar background. Yet in our surveys of members very few (less than 20%) swam in college. In one way, I think it unfortunate that USMS is separate from US Swimming because we could help them do a better job of promoting the l fitness and social aspects of our sport that make it so attractive to many people once they reach masters. In the meantime, we lose a lot of young people who decide to opt out of swimming because the demands of the sport are no longer attractive. Perhaps the USMS planning committee should develop )or expand ) our attempts to leverage the strenghts of the different parts of the swimming community with the objective to grow our sport on all levels.

There are some really good swimmers at the community college level. I'm uncertain about whether MR. Collins attended Santa Monica Community College. Also, I found out that Mr Dave Salo of Nova Aqautics fame coaches at Orange Coast College and Flipp Darr now retired coached at Saddleback community college. However,at the Community College level swimmers vary from ability to ability more than the four year level. When I swam at the women's team years ago at Golden West, we had A level age group swimmers in certain strokes like myself and we had one pre-national level swimmer and one that reach nationals in her high school years. Also, we had some people that didn't even swim in high school. Sure, the community colleges gives people a second chance but how many programs should California have I don't know. At the present, I have not heard of any cuts lately.

Cynthia, Kind of like biting the hand that feeds you, you swam at a community college and would have assumed that you gained some benefit from it (I know I did - I didn't swim in High School, for that matter our High School didn't have a swim team). How many community colleges should have a swim team, depnds on the administrators and demand - would assume that if no one tried out for a college swim team, they wouldn't have one and wouldn't waste money on it. The community college teams are great for our sport - gives those people who wouldn't make it to a division 1 or even division 2 school a chance to learn about competitive swimming and hopefully a lifetime enjoyment of the sport. The fact that not many 'national (fast) swimmers' swim at this level shouldn't dismiss the importance - because the same could be said of High School or even club teams - a team of 100 swimmers may only have a handful of Jr or Sr National level swimmers - yet there is more to swimming that winning titles and could be said that the life lessons learned are as important as anything learned in a classroom.

Well, with community college for women in my day, most people were at the end of their careers. It was for fun. I think that Men gain more from the Community college system since they develop their body strength later and have more time drops past high school. If Golden West didn't have a team back then, then I would have swam at Orange Coast. Its just that colleges have budget limits and California has so many JC's that have sports programs that are so close together and if one did cut a program then someone could swim for another school that is less than 10 miles away. But I have not read of any cuts lately, probably the JC's programs are spared compared to four year swimming programs because they are cheaper to run. They rarely travel more than 50 miles for a meet. Usually, its the state final or maybe a couple of dual meets that are more than 50 miles. Also, they pay the coach a much smaller salary. As for high schools, I was in one of the slowest leagues in swimming-Garden Grove league. Last year, I lookup the results for CIF in Divsion 4 and only 4 or 5 boys or girls came from the Garden Grove league. Los Amigos high school (where I attended school) and Garden Grove are not the typical hot spots for swimming-since in the GG school district, anglos make up about only 20 percent of the population. In my day at least over 20 percent of the students had spainish surnames and that was the 1970's at my high school. I know there are plenty of asians and latins that swim, but many of the kids are from immirgrant backgrounds and never swam before high school in the GGSD. Should they limit swimming at all the high schools at the Garden Grove District. No, but its up to those schools if they want to kept certain sports programs. Many probably keep swimming because they see it as a means to get water polo players in shape and they of course each have a 25 yard pool-because they built the pools from the 1950's to 1968 when it was a lot cheaper to built it on a high school campus.

Just an fyi: January 8, 2003. The Dartmouth men’s and women’s varsity swimming and diving programs will be continued through a funding agreement between a group of students, alumni, and parents and the Dartmouth administration. The agreement calls for the program to be fully reinstated based on a $2 million fund-raising effort. That's from Dartmouth College News & Events. Here's a link to the student newspaper and the press release: sa.dartmouth.edu/.../index.php

One of the things that I did not see in this thread is the fact that Swimming as a sport tends to successfully graduate one of the (if not the) highest percentage of student atheletes. Does that ever make a difference? By extrapolation, the graduates would likely be more successful, and be in the position to make donations on a larger scale or more frequently. In response to Ms. Curran, I went to Pasadena City College, and it was not by any stretch a second rate swimming school. We regularly had meets with UCLA, USC and UCSB, as well as Cal State LB. We often got creamed, but always made them work for a win. JC's had no scholarships to offer, so we swam for local pride. My final 100 Butterfly in JC would have placed in the top 12 in NCAA Div 1 that year, but I swam it 2 months later. Oh Well.

I didn't say all Jr college swimmers are bad swimmers. But many of them are or were around my ability. I swam a 1:06.3 for a 100 yard butterfly and a 1:17.1 for a 100 yard breastroke and a 6:02 for a 500 yard free those were medocre times for the 1970's. If I swam those times in breastroke or butterfly in the 1950's, I would have made nationals. But in the current world, those are not that fast. I even went on the internet and seen that Jr times are not much faster than when I swam back in the 1970's. Sure, they are expections such as yourself but most Jr swimmers mainly the women can be beaten by CIF girls. Anyway, I didn't always enjoy swimming in my teens. I had a father that was pushy and some of the experiances are not that pleasant. For people that are average age groupers that can't be good swimmers are a four year school but are fair at a two year, they sometimes are pushed by parents. We didn't have state for women in those days, but I manage to place 8th twice in 100 yard butterfly at the Southern California meet and 13 and 14th in 100 yard breastroke and 16th in 500 yard freestyle and 15 or 16th in 50 yard butterfly. I enjoyed some of the experiances and still have the thrid place marble thing that Golden West women swimmers received for getting third place. In Arizona, most post-high school swimmers have to go to masters since their is no JR College swimming for swimmers at my ability.