For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.
Park Board, Part 3 – Moving up to the Wichita Swim Club 1970
(Start by reading Part 1 and Part 2)
Once I achieved dominance in the Park Board summer swim league, it was time to move up to the next level. Mickey, Rick Dillard, and Steve Odle had already joined the Wichita Swim Club, and they convinced me to sign up as well. I’ll never forget my first practice there. It was in an outdoor pool, but the pool was covered by an enormous canvas bubble, held up by a couple of huge fans constantly blowing air inside. Entry was gained through a revolving door at the end of an outdoor corridor from the dark and bare concrete locker room. Since it was wintertime, the walk from the locker room to the revolving door could be a severe test of toe toughness, as you gingerly avoided the icy patches along the walkway.
There was no point in wearing your glasses; about halfway through the revolving door they’d fog up so badly that you’d totally saturate your towel if you tried to clean them off. Sometimes, the fog inside the bubble would be so bad that you couldn’t see more than 1/3 of the pool. Fortunately, on my first night there, the visibility was pretty good. It wasn’t hard to find the coach…he carried a clipboard, and his booming voice made it clear who was in charge.
His name was Doug Sidles, and I later came to have a great deal of love and respect for the man. That first night, though, I was simply eager to show him the awesome conditioning that I’d gained through my years with the mighty Harvest Park team.
We chatted for a few minutes. He asked me my race times, and what sorts of workouts I had been through. I told him, confident in the knowledge that our HP workouts were far more grueling than anything those wimps at Westlink or Country Acres ever had to put up with. Doug nodded knowingly and pointed to lane 5. “Start here,” he said, and then walked away to answer another swimmer’s question.
I eased myself into the water, and started to introduce myself to my lanemates. Then I realized the mistake. I was a 15-year-old male in the prime of my swimming career, and these people in Lane 5 were 11 and 12-year-old girls! I raised my hand. “Uh, Mr. Coach, Sir,” I pleaded. “Um, I think I’m in the wrong lane.” But it was too late – the set was starting.
“All right”, I grumbled to myself. “I’ll swim with these Barbie-loving toddlers. We’ll resolve this after the set.” Let the swimming begin.
In about two minutes, it was obvious to everyone in the pool that I had been right about not belonging in that lane – those little girls were killers! There was no way I could keep up with them. In moments, I was standing in the shallow end of the pool, bent over double gasping for air…while girls too young for training bras were streaking up and down the pool, lapping me without effort.
I almost quit right there. I could easily go back to Harvest Park and continue my dominance of what I could now see was a clearly inferior league…or I could stay here and have every ounce of my masculinity stripped away, pounded to a pulp, and discarded in the fog of the great canvas bubble.
But I had my pride. I resolved right then and there to work as hard as I could – to give every last effort I could to the task of improvement. I swore an oath to myself; “By all that is Holy in this world, I swear that I shall overcome all adversity and shall shirk no challenge until I have finally, once and for all, achieved my goal. By all that is Great and Powerful, I shall not rest until I have moved up to the lane with the 11-year-old boys!”
It took some time, but I got better. By the end of my career with WSC, I could routinely keep up with boys who were only 2 or 3 years younger than me. And with the exception of the girl who was leading the lane that first night, I eventually was able to swim faster than the others I'd met that evening. (The 11-year-old who was leading the lane turned out to be Robin Messner, who was ranked in the top 3 in the world only two short years later. I was never able to beat her in anything.)
Ed Poley had been right; there was an entire other swimming realm out there. The Park Board league had been fun, but WSC had real swimmers, and attended real meets. Some of those experiences will be chronicled in other chapters. But for now, I’ll leave you with a footnote to my Park Board swimming career.
About a year after I joined WSC, I attended a meet at Harvest Park, to cheer for my old teammates. My brother was swimming the 200 free, and I prepared to yell my support from beyond the chain link fence. But this was the Park Board Championship meet, and Harvest Park was only a few points behind the hated Westlink Pool team. My brother needed to win the 200 in order to pull our team ahead.
There were no rules against substitutions, so I put on my old green & white striped suit, changed the name on my brother’s entry card, and headed to the starting blocks. (Well, OK, the Park Board didn’t use starting blocks – you’d just curl your toes over the edge of the gutter – but you know what I mean.)
Perhaps it was just a natural product of a teenage growth spurt, perhaps the fact that Doug Sidles was an excellent coach. Or maybe it was the motivation I felt from being humiliated by that snotty pack of tiny little ass-kicking girls at WSC…but whatever the reason, the obvious fact was that I had improved a lot. I won the race, and had even gotten out of the pool and started to dry off before any of the other competitors had made the turn for their final length. As I walked from the pool deck, I smiled and waved at the crowd of spectators, who were whispering among themselves about rumors of a mythological place called the Wichita Swim Club.
I said my final goodbye to Park Board swimming that day, and returned to resume my role as a little fish in a bigger pond.
Many more swimming stories are yet to come. Some are actually entertaining.
Stay tuned, my friends.
Terry
Wednesday, July 02, 2003
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.
Park Board, Part 2 1963 thru 1969
(Start by reading Part 1)
The practices were chaotic. No lane ropes. No particular skills displayed by either the participants or the coaches. We mostly just tried our best to get away with the minimal effort. But our tans improved with each day.
Then we had our first local “Park Board” swim meet, which was a three-way competition between Harvest Park and the two other local park pools. I entered the 25-meter freestyle; one length of the pool, as fast as my little arms could crank. There was no strategy, no finesse, and no particular athletic ability in evidence. But I won my age group
I was hooked. That blue ribbon was cool. I wanted more.
For the next 6 years, swimming was my primary activity during the summer. Oh, sure, I played some baseball. I rode my bike. I watched “Major Astro” in the afternoons. And as all young boys do, I fought with my siblings as much as possible. I considered all these pastimes equally, at first. But when I got hit in the eye socket by a rapidly-thrown hardball when trying to play catch with Mark Dotzour, well, I decided that swimming was probably the sport I wanted to concentrate on. Much less dangerous. Or so I thought.
But tragedy struck at the next swim meet. A kid in the heat before my event apparently had a seizure during his race and sank to the bottom. All I knew at the time was that I had to wait in the hot sun for a very long time before my race was called to the starting blocks. It wasn’t until later that we heard about the extensive efforts to revive the little boy, and how those efforts had ultimately failed. He didn’t make it.
Everyone in the league was saddened and sobered by the loss. Though none of us at Harvest Park knew him personally, our entire team was urged to pray for his family, and we did. But we also retained the optimism of our youth – something like that could never happen to me! We just got back in the pool and started training for the next competition, not even noticing how all the parents now watched with a new and different set of eyes.
Our main rivals within the Park Board league were the Westlink Pool team (from the opposite end of our subdivision), and the team from Country Acres, which had formerly been the westernmost suburb – until the upstart Westlinkians started moving in. It was typically a battle royale between the HP and Westlink teams, with Country Acres settling for a few table scraps. Westlink had these nasty-looking Speedo team suits covered with vertical red and white stripes. Our team cranked the fashion barometer up to an entirely new level; we had green and white stripes on our Speedos…PLUS, we had these nifty round hand-sewn patches that said “HP” (also in the same gawdawful leaf green color). Each suit patch was a stiff circle, about 3 inches in diameter – which meant that the smallest kids could barely move their legs without getting “patch burn”. Some even developed a special kind of Frankenstein walk to avoid being emasculated by the rigid, disk-like symbol of team pride that they proudly displayed near such a sensitive area of the anatomy.
In my age group, the Westlink relay was powered by Mickey Canaday (who later became my best friend) and a cocky bad-boy named Skip Bunker. Harvest Park depended on Herbie and a powerful kid named Dean Parker. The races were always close, and though we lost our share of them, we were learning how to compete with enthusiasm and dignity.
Though my memory is a little hazy regarding the chronology of coaches we had, a few stand out: Steve Miller because of his freckles, jaunty visor, and later, the speculation whether he was the same guy as the rock star who did “Big Ol’ Jet Airliner” – Brad Tompkins because of his awesome butterfly and the number of times his name appeared on the record board at Friends University – and Ed Poley, who could swim 50 meters underwater without a breath.
It was Ed Poley who told us tales of the mythical Wichita Swim Club. It was housed in a facility far, far across to the other side of town, shrouded in mystery and awe. From its hallowed lanes, he told us, swimmers achieved National Rankings and Olympic Berths. The swimmers of WSC had muscles so huge that they had to have their T-shirts custom made. They could swim 50 miles butterfly while carrying VW buses on their backs. Their lungs were so powerful that they could inflate weather balloons with a single breath. “If you work hard enough,” he said, “you could someday swim with these great warriors of the water.” You could almost hear the orchestra crescendo as he spoke.
We kept working. From the time I was 13 until I turned 15, I was consistently in the top 2 in my age group. I swam the “distance” race…the 200 freestyle. The only person who could beat me consistently was Bill Larsen, and he didn’t show up for all the meets. After Bill and I, the field dropped off dramatically. I had reason to be confident, since I knew I’d always be in the hunt for the top place. I never disparaged my competitors, but we all knew that I’d taken my place among the elite. I had achieved a small degree of stardom.
It was time for a growth experience, which I’ll share with you next.
Terry
Park Board, Part 2 1963 thru 1969
(Start by reading Part 1)
The practices were chaotic. No lane ropes. No particular skills displayed by either the participants or the coaches. We mostly just tried our best to get away with the minimal effort. But our tans improved with each day.
Then we had our first local “Park Board” swim meet, which was a three-way competition between Harvest Park and the two other local park pools. I entered the 25-meter freestyle; one length of the pool, as fast as my little arms could crank. There was no strategy, no finesse, and no particular athletic ability in evidence. But I won my age group
I was hooked. That blue ribbon was cool. I wanted more.
For the next 6 years, swimming was my primary activity during the summer. Oh, sure, I played some baseball. I rode my bike. I watched “Major Astro” in the afternoons. And as all young boys do, I fought with my siblings as much as possible. I considered all these pastimes equally, at first. But when I got hit in the eye socket by a rapidly-thrown hardball when trying to play catch with Mark Dotzour, well, I decided that swimming was probably the sport I wanted to concentrate on. Much less dangerous. Or so I thought.
But tragedy struck at the next swim meet. A kid in the heat before my event apparently had a seizure during his race and sank to the bottom. All I knew at the time was that I had to wait in the hot sun for a very long time before my race was called to the starting blocks. It wasn’t until later that we heard about the extensive efforts to revive the little boy, and how those efforts had ultimately failed. He didn’t make it.
Everyone in the league was saddened and sobered by the loss. Though none of us at Harvest Park knew him personally, our entire team was urged to pray for his family, and we did. But we also retained the optimism of our youth – something like that could never happen to me! We just got back in the pool and started training for the next competition, not even noticing how all the parents now watched with a new and different set of eyes.
Our main rivals within the Park Board league were the Westlink Pool team (from the opposite end of our subdivision), and the team from Country Acres, which had formerly been the westernmost suburb – until the upstart Westlinkians started moving in. It was typically a battle royale between the HP and Westlink teams, with Country Acres settling for a few table scraps. Westlink had these nasty-looking Speedo team suits covered with vertical red and white stripes. Our team cranked the fashion barometer up to an entirely new level; we had green and white stripes on our Speedos…PLUS, we had these nifty round hand-sewn patches that said “HP” (also in the same gawdawful leaf green color). Each suit patch was a stiff circle, about 3 inches in diameter – which meant that the smallest kids could barely move their legs without getting “patch burn”. Some even developed a special kind of Frankenstein walk to avoid being emasculated by the rigid, disk-like symbol of team pride that they proudly displayed near such a sensitive area of the anatomy.
In my age group, the Westlink relay was powered by Mickey Canaday (who later became my best friend) and a cocky bad-boy named Skip Bunker. Harvest Park depended on Herbie and a powerful kid named Dean Parker. The races were always close, and though we lost our share of them, we were learning how to compete with enthusiasm and dignity.
Though my memory is a little hazy regarding the chronology of coaches we had, a few stand out: Steve Miller because of his freckles, jaunty visor, and later, the speculation whether he was the same guy as the rock star who did “Big Ol’ Jet Airliner” – Brad Tompkins because of his awesome butterfly and the number of times his name appeared on the record board at Friends University – and Ed Poley, who could swim 50 meters underwater without a breath.
It was Ed Poley who told us tales of the mythical Wichita Swim Club. It was housed in a facility far, far across to the other side of town, shrouded in mystery and awe. From its hallowed lanes, he told us, swimmers achieved National Rankings and Olympic Berths. The swimmers of WSC had muscles so huge that they had to have their T-shirts custom made. They could swim 50 miles butterfly while carrying VW buses on their backs. Their lungs were so powerful that they could inflate weather balloons with a single breath. “If you work hard enough,” he said, “you could someday swim with these great warriors of the water.” You could almost hear the orchestra crescendo as he spoke.
We kept working. From the time I was 13 until I turned 15, I was consistently in the top 2 in my age group. I swam the “distance” race…the 200 freestyle. The only person who could beat me consistently was Bill Larsen, and he didn’t show up for all the meets. After Bill and I, the field dropped off dramatically. I had reason to be confident, since I knew I’d always be in the hunt for the top place. I never disparaged my competitors, but we all knew that I’d taken my place among the elite. I had achieved a small degree of stardom.
It was time for a growth experience, which I’ll share with you next.
Terry
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.
Park Board - Part 1 – 1963 thru 1969
I grew up in the suburbs. Some folks may not consider Wichita, Kansas to be a big enough city to justify having designated suburbs, but this was the early 1960s – every town in America was on a lateral expansion bandwagon. Thanks to America’s postwar prosperity and the collective triumphs of thousands of George Baileys over their respective Mr. Potters, young married couples were migrating out of the cities. For many, it was less than one generation since their families had left the farm to move into the cities, but that’s OK – it’s now the Space Age.
I mean, if American families didn’t move into suburban subdivisions, what the hell were the manufacturers going to do with all those unused avocado refrigerators and ultra-modern gas ovens? Not to mention the billions of square yards of Formica with pastel-colored Star Trek badge logos all over them…
Our neighborhood was being built to order. Each family hired its own architect, planned its dream home, and picked out an 80-foot lot of dirt to build it on. I was about 6 years old when we first visited the future Heggy home. Mom pointed to the little flag-topped wires that appeared to be randomly tossed about the yard and said, “Here’s the kitchen, and there’s the bathroom…”
Sure, Mom, I thought. We’re gonna live on a patch of dirt. Well, I suppose it beats sharing a duplex with those smelly folks and their bratty kids we were currently next to. That little neighbor boy had broken my toy vacuum cleaner with the colored balls that popped up inside the plastic dome when you pushed it. The bastard. Yeah, I can handle dirt, I guess.
The little flag wires grew into 2 x 4s, which sprouted sheetrock and electrical outlets, and before you knew it, we were moving in. We weren’t the first house in the neighborhood, but there were still plenty of vacant lots around when we occupied the home.
The subdivision was called Westlink, and there was even a big, ultra-modern wedge-shaped sign announcing this fact to anyone who drove down Central Avenue. At the time, Westlink was on the western frontier of town; take a few more steps toward the sunset and you’d be immersed in the wild territory of the untamed Cowskin Creek. The suburb was growing faster than we kids were; and it was fun to watch.
There was a shopping center with a Dillons supermarket, and a Rexall Drug store. There was an elementary school, and another one under construction. And no modern neighborhood would be complete without a couple of churches, including the bizarre A-Frame of the Westlink Baptist Church, which looked more like it belonged in the Alps than in the Great Plains. And not too long after we moved in, the big machines started digging the hole for the Harvest Park Swimming Pool.
The Harvest Park Pool was a standard L-shaped affair, with a 6-lane 25-meter section conjoined to a square diving well, which featured a one-meter and three-meter board. None of us were really sure what a “meter” was, but we were confident that we’d learn all about it in school (along with readin’, writin’, and how to duck and cover during a nuclear attack.)
Our family spent a lot of time at Harvest Park. The first swimming day of the summer was unofficially known as “burn yourself to hell” day. We may not have known how to swim yet, or how to convert yards to meters, but two things were immutably clear: 1) You would die if you got moisture on any body part during the first hour after eating (stomach cramps, you know), and 2) You had to get a good burn before you’d start to get a suntan.
That first night, we’d lube up with First Aid Cream and sit in a bathtub full of ice cubes, enduring the pain with the certain knowledge that our suffering was for a good cause. For the next three days, we’d wear white T-shirts to the pool to protect the seared flesh of our backs. (Our legs were on their own, I guess.)
We took swimming lessons each summer, and spent many pleasant evenings frolicking around in the shallow part of the pool. At 25 cents per person per visit, it soon became obvious that we needed a “family membership”. From then on, we just recited our last name as we came up to the front desk of the pool facility. Boys turned left while the girls turned right. We were required to shower before entering the pool, so naturally, the challenge was to apply precisely the minimum amount of water that the stern lifeguard would accept as a “shower”. (It didn’t take much.)
I was amazed with my Dad’s ability to swim underwater and grab our legs when we least expected. And I’ll never forget the day that my sister first swam an entire length of the pool without stopping. I was inspired to duplicate that prodigious feat myself.
I worked hard at swimming lessons, trying to catch up with my sister. My best friend, Herbie, and I would hang out at the pool at any opportunity. Herbie was a natural swimmer, and charismatically got to know the entire pool staff almost on opening day. When he encouraged me to join the summer swim team, I declined. But under his constant needling, I finally agreed to give it a try. After all, it meant I’d get to stay at the pool even longer each day.
I’ll tell you about that in the next installment.
Terry
Park Board - Part 1 – 1963 thru 1969
I grew up in the suburbs. Some folks may not consider Wichita, Kansas to be a big enough city to justify having designated suburbs, but this was the early 1960s – every town in America was on a lateral expansion bandwagon. Thanks to America’s postwar prosperity and the collective triumphs of thousands of George Baileys over their respective Mr. Potters, young married couples were migrating out of the cities. For many, it was less than one generation since their families had left the farm to move into the cities, but that’s OK – it’s now the Space Age.
I mean, if American families didn’t move into suburban subdivisions, what the hell were the manufacturers going to do with all those unused avocado refrigerators and ultra-modern gas ovens? Not to mention the billions of square yards of Formica with pastel-colored Star Trek badge logos all over them…
Our neighborhood was being built to order. Each family hired its own architect, planned its dream home, and picked out an 80-foot lot of dirt to build it on. I was about 6 years old when we first visited the future Heggy home. Mom pointed to the little flag-topped wires that appeared to be randomly tossed about the yard and said, “Here’s the kitchen, and there’s the bathroom…”
Sure, Mom, I thought. We’re gonna live on a patch of dirt. Well, I suppose it beats sharing a duplex with those smelly folks and their bratty kids we were currently next to. That little neighbor boy had broken my toy vacuum cleaner with the colored balls that popped up inside the plastic dome when you pushed it. The bastard. Yeah, I can handle dirt, I guess.
The little flag wires grew into 2 x 4s, which sprouted sheetrock and electrical outlets, and before you knew it, we were moving in. We weren’t the first house in the neighborhood, but there were still plenty of vacant lots around when we occupied the home.
The subdivision was called Westlink, and there was even a big, ultra-modern wedge-shaped sign announcing this fact to anyone who drove down Central Avenue. At the time, Westlink was on the western frontier of town; take a few more steps toward the sunset and you’d be immersed in the wild territory of the untamed Cowskin Creek. The suburb was growing faster than we kids were; and it was fun to watch.
There was a shopping center with a Dillons supermarket, and a Rexall Drug store. There was an elementary school, and another one under construction. And no modern neighborhood would be complete without a couple of churches, including the bizarre A-Frame of the Westlink Baptist Church, which looked more like it belonged in the Alps than in the Great Plains. And not too long after we moved in, the big machines started digging the hole for the Harvest Park Swimming Pool.
The Harvest Park Pool was a standard L-shaped affair, with a 6-lane 25-meter section conjoined to a square diving well, which featured a one-meter and three-meter board. None of us were really sure what a “meter” was, but we were confident that we’d learn all about it in school (along with readin’, writin’, and how to duck and cover during a nuclear attack.)
Our family spent a lot of time at Harvest Park. The first swimming day of the summer was unofficially known as “burn yourself to hell” day. We may not have known how to swim yet, or how to convert yards to meters, but two things were immutably clear: 1) You would die if you got moisture on any body part during the first hour after eating (stomach cramps, you know), and 2) You had to get a good burn before you’d start to get a suntan.
That first night, we’d lube up with First Aid Cream and sit in a bathtub full of ice cubes, enduring the pain with the certain knowledge that our suffering was for a good cause. For the next three days, we’d wear white T-shirts to the pool to protect the seared flesh of our backs. (Our legs were on their own, I guess.)
We took swimming lessons each summer, and spent many pleasant evenings frolicking around in the shallow part of the pool. At 25 cents per person per visit, it soon became obvious that we needed a “family membership”. From then on, we just recited our last name as we came up to the front desk of the pool facility. Boys turned left while the girls turned right. We were required to shower before entering the pool, so naturally, the challenge was to apply precisely the minimum amount of water that the stern lifeguard would accept as a “shower”. (It didn’t take much.)
I was amazed with my Dad’s ability to swim underwater and grab our legs when we least expected. And I’ll never forget the day that my sister first swam an entire length of the pool without stopping. I was inspired to duplicate that prodigious feat myself.
I worked hard at swimming lessons, trying to catch up with my sister. My best friend, Herbie, and I would hang out at the pool at any opportunity. Herbie was a natural swimmer, and charismatically got to know the entire pool staff almost on opening day. When he encouraged me to join the summer swim team, I declined. But under his constant needling, I finally agreed to give it a try. After all, it meant I’d get to stay at the pool even longer each day.
I’ll tell you about that in the next installment.
Terry
