Poll on competitive history pre-Masters

Swam four years at U of Texas and came frustratingly close to Olympic Trials cuts in both the 400 free and 400 IM in 1988 ... I can't say every day was fun and missing those cuts (as well as getting close to NCAA cuts in my senior year) was a huge bummer, but the college swimming experience was fabulous. Fortunately for me, I was a distance guy, didn't mind the 1000 - 500 dual meet duo and tended to swim pretty consistently in season so I got to travel. Travelling with the team was a blast, except for one notorious blowout by the Cardinal. My all-time best swimming experience, though, came when I was in the Peace Corps after college and managed to find my way to both helping coach and swim with the Swaziland National Swim team (on weekends away from my normal teaching duties). I got to go to a southern African swim championships (minus South Africa) in Mozambique shortly after the civil war had subsided. Aside from catching malaria while I was there, it was an infinitely cool swim meet.

Midas, I mentioned that I swam at a Div III college but didn't bother to say it was Trenton State...........! Didn't think anyone else had gone there! Glenn Gruber TSC class of '71

Started swimming my 10th grade year in a Los Angeles City High School, placed 5th in the 200 and 500 free as a senior, swam 1 year at Colorado State University, a D1 school. Colorado State dropped the men's team after my freshman year. Swam another year on an age group team. Quit for 22 years until someone challenged me to swim against them. They one the first time we raced, but not since. Have been in Masters for 5 years and having a boatload of fun with it. Plus, I can eat almost anything now. Am lighter by 20 pounds from almost six years of swimming.

Go Redbirds!! I swam for the old guy Archie Harris from 1964 thru 1967, Weren't the NCAA College Div (they didn't call it Div II back then) championships hosted by your school (and Archie Harris) back in '64 and '65? I swam for San Diego State back then, we won the team championship both years. But the second year four of us got a little too celebratory (alcohol induced) and went on an uninvited and very noisy midnight visit to one of the womens dormitories --- our evening ended up in the local slammer. Made the wire services but our coach had to tell the Aztec press office to cancel the welcome home at the airport since he and us bad boys wouldn't be on the plane due to a pending court appearance. Met a young lady from Normal IL a few years later who said that our spiritedness had inspired her to transfer to San Diego State!

Jim Matysek, our very kindly and sagacious high technology wizard, has added the category I did not add originally, i.e., "I didn't swim competitively until adulthood." Please, if you are one of the many posters here that have mentioned this describes you, go back and vote accordingly if it allows you to. Thanks! So far, it seems like a very nice distribution of past histories of swimming, with the median point seeming to be somewhere around 1 year of college swimming--with half of us reporting more, half of us less reporting less, younger swimming experience. If the folks who haven't swum at all till adulthood add their votes, it might tilt things slightly in the "less experienced" direction. In any event, I think it's very cool that our sport brings together people with so many different backgrounds in the sport. And I would also like to point out how helpful the really great performers have been to the rest of us--guys like Ande and Chris Stevenson are just a few of the greats that pop immediately to mind! Thanks!

Count me as none of the above

We definitely have one foreign Olympian poster here, and it looks like he's voted. Or is there another lurking around? I swam at Texas for four years, swam at two Olympic Trials, was on the USA Swimming national team for five years. And Michael Phelps is a poster? Cool!

I'm always amazed by those who've started swimming competitively after not even knowing how to swim until adulthood. That's really astounding! But I also can't imagine going through childhood and never swimming.

I apologize for leaving out what surely would have been a significant category--i.e., did not swim at all until taking up the sport in adulthood. I realized my mistake shortly after posting the poll but was afraid that if I tried to redo things to add this category, it would screw up all the other entries so far. Somehow, I don't believe Michael Phelps is THE Michael Phelps, but if it is, please give us lumpenproletarians some advice. Actually, I am pretty sure that Dara occasionally checks this discussion out. I have read that there is a huge Phelps-bump for age group swimming right now. Maybe Dara could trigger a similar Torres-bump for masters. In any event, it's nice to see such a diversity here in our ranks. I swam for one year at Michigan, the second worst person on the team, and met a predictable fate at the end of the first season. In this, it seems that I am continuing through life as a prototype of an Average Man, what with 1 year of college swimming the most common experience in the poll so far. I am curious to what extent former glory (or lack of it) predicts Masters glory. To wit, if anyone is willing to share their top Top 10 accomplishment in conjuction with their youthful success, I think this could be eye-opening. I am pretty sure that Leslie Livingston, who swam only one year at Dartmouth, has swum No. 1 times, at least in relays. Has anyone set a world record in masters without at least qualifying in youth for Olympic trials? My own best ranking was 4th in a couple LCM events the year I turned 50, which was light years better than I ever did as a youngster. How about the rest of you? Has anyone who took up swimming as an adult ever made the Top 10? (Please, Ion, god love you, but this is not a solicitation!)

PS if anyone knows how to add a category to the poll at this point--i.e., I did not swim competitively till after I became an adult--please let me know how to do so.