College Swimming Team

College sports are all together different than high school sports. It is much more rigorous and time consuming. The few athletes that go on to college sports are generally the skilled and the very best and talented high school participants. I was not a very talented high school athlete. I swam competively in the AAU league when I was young and swam in the annual swimming meet at the pool. That was my only experience.

When I visited with Coach John Steigman about going out for the team he told me he really doubted that I would be very successful because I would be swimming against skilled athletes that had been swimming competitively for years. Some had as much as twelve years experience. I think Coach Steigman let me on the team because he was hurting for swimmers because of injuries and was having trouble putting a team in the pool.

The team consisted of a gifted swimmer and Olympic trial qualifier who had flunked out of The University of Iowa; three freshmen that had been state qualifiers and place finishers in their home states and two junior lettermen. Then there was me. When I told the team members of my experience they laughed. It was obvious they were way out of my league.

The first day of practice nearly killed me! Two hours of intensive swimming including sprints and distance was more physical activity than I had had for some time. I remember going home and collapsing on the bed and sleeping for a couple of hours. It went on like that for a week and I finally begin to build up some endurance.

I don’t think anyone ever expected much out of me. The team needed a backstroker. That would be me and then I would fill in a place on the sprint freestyle relay and the medley relay. In the first meet I was second in the 200 backstroke and the 200-yard freestyle. I could tell the rest of the team looked at me differently and I felt like I might be able to help out after all.

In the second meet I swam the backstroke leg of the medley relay and we won the race although we lost the meet to Coe College. At Illinois College we won the 400-yard relay just after I won the 200-yard backstroke. I was exhausted but swam well anyway. We also won the medley relay that day and the meet.

In the conference championship meet we placed second. Our medley relay and freestyle relays placed second and I placed third in the backstroke. It was a tough meet and a long trip to Principia College that is located high on a bluff above the Mississippi River north of St. Louis.

At the winter sports banquet I was recognized for my contributions to the team and I received a letter. I was thrilled. I had achieved something I didn’t think was possible for me. That was the end of my college athletic career. Coach Steigman asked me to come out my senior year but I was busy working and student teaching and just didn’t see how I could work it in.