Were you a College Swimmer?

We did not have NCAA swimming when I was in college. I swam for a club college team in New Jersey before transferring to DU in Colorado. During l968 and l969 they only had a club team . Instead of attending college winter quarter, I went during the summer so I could work at Vail and ski everyday! I did not swim for 12 years!. I got back to Masters when I lived in Atlanta and have been swimming masters for about 30 years!

That's something worth boasting about. Artur was a heck of a swimmer! Yeah, but I seriously doubt he was tapered or shaved.

In SoCal the swimming & diving program at UC Irvine was shut down this year. A couple of great local masters swimmer/coach types (Keith Ryan & Aleah Amr) set about rounding up some of them to recruit for the OCC COAST Masters. www.coastmastersswimming.com They showed up last weekend at the Southwest Zone / SPMA Regional Championships and took home 5th place overall! Had to be one of the hottest "young" clubs in the history of at least SPMA swimming! I thought it would have been fun to take a photo of the COAST & San Diego Swim Masters clubs side by side. Two ends of the spectrum :)

In SoCal the swimming & diving program at UC Irvine was shut down this year. A couple of great local masters swimmer/coach types (Keith Ryan & Aleah Amr) set about rounding up some of them to recruit for the OCC COAST Masters. www.coastmastersswimming.com They showed up last weekend at the Southwest Zone / SPMA Regional Championships and took home 5th place overall! Had to be one of the hottest "young" clubs in the history of at least SPMA swimming! I thought it would have been fun to take a photo of the COAST & San Diego Swim Masters clubs side by side. Two ends of the spectrum :) UC Irvine is my alma mater. I was very sorry to hear that the program was shutdown. We had fair swimmers and amazing divers - Jenny Chandler and Greg Louganis were the top divers there when I was swimming. We always got max diving points. Glad to hear that the masters team there is recruiting college age swimmers.

The answers posting to this thread are most definitely not the norm for USMS members... Print off the poll and take it to your club coach or workout group. Then post the results up. I would venture to say that out of the 170 swimmers on our new club here in SoCal, maybe 3 or 4 max swam in college. And probably less than 25 ever swam competitively at all. Except during holiday breaks and the summer when our head coach allows any college swimmer to swim for free. They do have to join USMS and affiliate with the club. I assume this will drive up the competitive swimmer numbers in the near future. As a new master's swimmer who has never competed, I am a bit surprised at the poll also (poll would indicate that I'm really in the minority). The day I visited the local Master's workout group & met the coach, literally the first words out of his mouth were "only about a quarter of members ever competed, many people who swam when young got burned out, and now do something else" I don't recall being asked when joining USMS my swimming experience, so I wonder what the real numbers are. I think the members on the USMS blogs take it seriously (that's why they're on it :)) and therefore much more likely to have swam HS, college, or age group than perhaps the general USMS membership. Just my :2cents:. I joined Masters for fitness & personal enjoyment with perhaps the eventual goal of competing. For now, however, I can echo what was posted once on the 'you know you're a swimmer when . . . your pants are now loose' . . . I am experiencing that & have lost 15-20 lbs since I started. I'm having to tighten my pant belts to the point where I might have to drop a size or two :). Oh, and feel better most of the time, too.

4 years Division1 - Illinois State University (when they had a men's team). I was a walk on. (ISU had started cutting back and the coach was forced to split scholarships to offer anything.) I swam because I loved it. Best: Archie Harris - One hell of a human being and counselor as well as a great coach. Worst: 5:30AM practices in January when the wind chill around Horton Fieldhouse was well below zero. No regrets! All good as far as I am concerned.

I swam four years in a D-III school, and pretty much burned out my Junior year. Lots of garbage yards, not a lot of stroke work and a coach that was paying a lot of attention to his mid-life crisis (along with the new blond diving coach) and not so much to recruiting or coaching. Similar experience for me - 4 years D-III school, my first coach was really good, but he got stupid with the new blond diving coach (not sure why though, and don't want to know) and he ended up getting dismissed after my 2nd year. The new coach came in and point blank said to me that the incoming freshman and those after were "his team" and that was where he was going to put his time and effort - he felt he might be able to "rescue" some of the returning freshmen. He was concerned with our (juniors and seniors) attitudes. We lost a couple of really good guys to that - and we were a small team 12-15 total. I was too stubborn to quit, I wasn't letting him push me out, swam most of my senior season alone in the mornings. In the end, I was elected the team captain the final two years and voted the team MVP twice more, and I could see that it pained him to announce those results. So much for my "bad attitude". But I was done with swimming at that point. Still in touch with some old teammates-have gone to some alumni meets, stuff like that, all in all no real regrets. Would have liked Coach #1 to have stuck around, #2 kind of soured me on coaches, might have started masters earlier if the last years were more fun and enjoyable.

As a new master's swimmer who has never competed, I am a bit surprised at the poll also (poll would indicate that I'm really in the minority). The day I visited the local Master's workout group & met the coach, literally the first words out of his mouth were "only about a quarter of members ever competed, many people who swam when young got burned out, and now do something else" I don't recall being asked when joining USMS my swimming experience, so I wonder what the real numbers are. I think the members on the USMS blogs take it seriously (that's why they're on it :)) and therefore much more likely to have swam HS, college, or age group than perhaps the general USMS membership. Just my :2cents:. Exactly why I was curious. I figured alot of the regulars on this board were college swimmers or at least pretty good high schoolers or age groupers. However, I am a bit surprised that people are saying that such small percentages of their masters team members have ever competed at any level. Out of the roughly 40 or so swimmers that we have, I would guess 1 or 2 have never swam competitively at any level. Perhaps some of these teams are made up largely of triathletes that do not consider themselves as competitive swimmers?

The new coach came in and point blank said to me that the incoming freshman and those after were "his team" and that was where he was going to put his time and effort I can't understand why a new coach would come in and burn bridges like that. Telling the existing team members that "things are going to change" and "it's my way or the highway" is one thing, but I just can't imagine the rationale for alienating the team like this. Was the guy just a jerk or what?

I can't understand why a new coach would come in and burn bridges like that. Telling the existing team members that "things are going to change" and "it's my way or the highway" is one thing, but I just can't imagine the rationale for alienating the team like this. Was the guy just a jerk or what? Looking back at it , it makes me a little sad - I lost two good relay mates. He was a bit of a self important jerk - I don't think he was an actual swimmer at any point - I recall he was the team manager at Penn State or something like that (he actually had us stop by Hershey PA on our annual team training trip to the Hall of Fame pool in Fla. - it was a little too hokey for me) Maybe he wanted to show us how serious a hard ass he was - we were a little bit on the misfit side as a team. I think if he'd have said were going to buckle down and I need your help - I think I could have easily pulled the others along. As it was I sort of ended up staying, and succeding - as a big FU to him. Not really the way I wanted to do my college swimming. Live and learn, maybe he did too. Now I think I know a good coach from a bad coach.