To celebrate my 63rd birthday (today) and 50 years in swimming (I first joined a team at age 13 in 1964) I’ve decided to devote a series of posts to reflecting on what I’ve learned about swimming along the way. Like many people, I started out ignorant of what lay ahead—and indeed ignorant about most everything to do with swimming, but have come to a place of enjoyment, awareness, and understanding I could not have imagined at the start.

School Daze

From age 14 to 20, I swam on high school, college, and club teams. I’d

tried out for the swim team at St. Aidan’s grammar school as a 13-year old 8^th grader—mostly because I tried out for every sport and had already been on football, basketball, baseball, and soccer teams and run in a diocesan track meet. Swimming was the last sport I attempted and the first for which I failed the tryout. (The coach who cut me is nearly 90 now, and whenever we meet, we share a laugh over the irony of his cutting the Total Immersion guy.)

When I began high school, my school, St Mary’s, didn’t have a swim team, so I ran cross-country my first year. Crossing the finish line last of a hundred or more runners in a freshman invitational convinced me I had limited prospects as a runner.

In my second year, St. Mary’s started a swim team. Having swum on a village team for two summers, this time I made the grade. I was happy simply to belong, but knew nothing about technique or training, and my only goal initially was to keep up in the breathless 25-yard sprints that were our sole training routine.

Our coach was a Marist brother with no swim coaching experience. He gave pep talks, but no instruction at our single weekly workout (the better swimmers were on club teams and swam more often.) We’d line up at one end of a 25-yard pool, sprint to the other then, then climb out and do it again. No matter how furiously I churned my arms, I always found myself in the wake of faster swimmers. But I was happy simply to be on the team and go to workout.

Over the holidays, a guest coach–Tom Liotti an All-America distance swimmer from nearby Adelphi University–taught us circle-swimming and told us to swim 500 yards–20 continuous lengths.

This was a revelatory moment: I discovered I could keep pace while others tired on a longer swim. I left the pool that day feeling a sense of identity I’d never had in any sport. I’d always been a ‘utility’ player with no designated position or role. Ever since that day, nearly 50 years ago, I’ve thought of myself as a distance swimmer. This sparked a desire to learn more.

The Spark of Curiosity

I visited the local library in search of a book on swimming. Though I’d played every organized sport, I’d never before got the bug to pursue ‘research.’ I can’t recall exactly what prompted me to search for a book, but believe I may have sensed that study might yield some clues to success in swimming.

The Williston Park library had only one swimming book–Competitive Swimming and Diving by University of Iowa Coach David A. Armbruster, published in 1942.  (I keep a vintage copy, found online, on my bookshelf.) I checked it out–then took it out again at 2-week intervals for months, studying it with far keener interest than any school text.

A brief section on technique advised I should “ride high” in the water, by “keeping the waterline between eyebrows and hairline” and “pressing down constantly with arms and legs to keep the hips near the surface.”  It seems that technique theories in 1965 had changed little from 1942, since the little I did learn about technique was pretty similar to what the book advised.

But mainly there were dozens of examples of workouts done by champions from the 1940s. Though coaches always dictated my workouts and I wouldn’t have the opportunity to try those in the book, I still studied them avidly, hoping they might yield clues on how to swim faster.

In the fall of 1967, at the beginning of senior year, I persuaded my parents to let me join Manhasset Swim Club, directed by Bill Irwin, who was Tom Liotti’s own coach. Bill was the first professional coach I’d been exposed to. I was now training four to six hours a week, rather than one. I also received my first instructions in technique—but proved an uncooperative student.

Several times, Bill said “Laughlin, you’ll never swim fast until you slow your arms down.”  But I couldn’t understand how stroking slower could possibly lead to swimming faster so I made only half-hearted efforts to apply his advice. Bill, at 85, remains a dear friend and we both enjoy the irony of my now being such a strong advocate of what he could not persuade me to do back then.

Bill Irwin (l) and Tom Liotti (r) in July 2013.

As my final season came to a close, my times were still too slow for the NYC Catholic Schools championship. But I swam in the ‘novice’ Championship, competing mainly with 9^th graders, placing 3^rd in 200 Free and 2^nd in 400 Free, earning handsome medals, and came away eager to continue swimming in college.