My First Income, 1964 - 1968

My first job ever was pulling dandelions for my mom. If I remember correctly, I got paid a penny for each one that came out with the entire root. No root, no penny. I even had a wicked, snake-tongued implement to drive down into the Kansas soil, to make sure I got every last stinking cell of the evil weeds.

At some point, I think I got a raise to two cents each. But by then I had grown jaded with this particular career path, and didn't really invest much enthusiasm into it.

Now, bagworms...that's a different story. Our juniper bushes would get infested with these nasty little parasites called bagworms -- so named because they metamorphed from grub to multi-legged stage within little bags they constructed around their bodies. Not nice fluffy cocoons, like friendly, fuzzy caterpillars, but deceptive little sacs covered with juniper cutting to camaflouge them from their enemies...namely me. Now, you may wonder why I enjoyed this task more than pulling "dandylines", especially since these critters were slimy and disgusting in every way. Well, the answer is gasoline, my friends. Sweet, golden gasoline.

I was probably 10 years old, and hadn't yet experienced the pleasure of Boy Scout campouts, where I could light fires and burn wood to my heart's content. Until the bagworm project, I had no outlet for every boy's natural tendency toward pyromania. But because simply removing the sac from the tree didn't end the vile creature's life, we were allowed to resort to extreme measures: burning.

My parents would supervise, of course. We deposit all the bugs we'd harvested from the bushes into a ceramic coated steel pan, and then my mom or dad would pour in enough gas to cover the little buggers completely. Then came the fun part; the match toss.

Yeah, I know, there is no way anyone would do this in today's world. But back then, no one thought anything at all about filling a pan with gas in the middle of the yard and telling their 10-year-old to heave a lit match at it. Whoomph! A nice big noise, and then some nice big flames. PETA would crucify us for this, but my brother and I actually made little bug voices and accompanied the flames with cries of "Oooh. Don't burn me! Augghhh! I'm melting..." and so forth. It was great fun.

I don't remember if we got paid for toasting the bagworms. Probably did, but as long as I got to make fire, I'd surely have done it for free.

Somewhere around this same time, I also began to sell Christmas cards. Herbie Bevan and I would bug all our relatives and most of our neighbors until they'd agree to buy these personalized greeting cards. You could choose from several designs—some featured Santa, some Jesus, and a few were more Currier & Ives-ish with snow and candles and stuff. For $2.50 you'd get a pack of a dozen or so cards with your name printed on them in black block letters. Nobody actually wanted these printed cards, but they weren't much more expensive than unadorned cards, and everybody wanted to support our entrepreneurship.

We got some pretty impressive swag for these efforts. I got an honest-to-goodness "pup" tent (sleeps one, uncomfortably), and a real brass bugle! I used that bugle a few years later to call my fellow Scouts to assembly or mess...and I think my dad still has it hanging above his stairwell. Very cool.

But I gave up the greeting card business for lawn mowing. My brother and I would take turns doing a few yards in the neighborhood, and we began to get paid for doing our own as well. I think we charged $2 per yard, $2.50 if it was a big one.

We pooled the money from these small jobs in with what we'd saved from allowance, and eventually had enough to buy the Radio Shack Rock Starter Kit, which included an amp, a microphone, and an electric guitar, all for $88. Yes, my friends, back then you could rely on Radio Shack for all your band instruments and musical accessories.

I probably don't need to mention this, but the guitar was a complete piece of crap. Of course, I didn't know it at the time, I just hooked it up and played the opening to "Secret Agent Man" over and over and over again. But the story of my pursuit of guitar godhood will be covered elsewhere. The point here was to cover the minor income opportunities I had as a youth. In other installments, we'll explore my career as "Terrific Terry", the awesome magician, and my first exposure to mass media when I worked with the local newspaper. Stay tuned!

Fun at the Goal Meet - Omaha ~1973

Each year, our Wichita Swim Club team designated one of the summer's swim meets as the "Goal Meet". It was intended to be a fun trip; while we took the swimming competition seriously, the activities we experienced along the way were much more important. The Goal Meet was a bus trip, and each one featured at least one opportunity to do something entertaining. It also seemed that every goal meet featured some sort of impressive performance from one or more of our team members.

I only remember a few things about the Omaha Goal Meet. One was the opportunity we had to go off the 10-meter diving platform during a break in the swim meet. I climbed up the long ladder and was looking forward to a new and exciting diving experience.

The Olympic divers you see on television make it look so easy. They walk right up to the edge and do backwards handstands and stuff, right on the edge of this huge dropoff. Trust me, 10 meters is VERY high up there. From that height, the pool looks like a postage stamp.

I sorta scooted up to the edge of the platform and looked over, just like I would if I were at the edge of the Grand Canyon. I looked at the pool and thought, "Dang, if I don't jump completely straight, I could miss that little dot of water." I stayed up there for a while, just sort of looking around and trying to imagine working up the courage to jump off from such a great height. I did not want to be branded a chicken if I turned around and crawled back down the ladder.

Finally, though, I concluded that being a chicken was infinitely preferable to being a greasy spot on the concrete deck so many miles below. I turned around and headed for the ladder.

Glenn Nyberg had also climbed the ladder as a first time 10-m visitor, as I had. He had also looked over the edge and had seen how tiny the people looked, and how uninviting the drop appeared. Since it was obvious that no sane person would ever jump off, much less dive, I assumed that Glenn would be heading for the ladder as well.

Instead, though, he just ran up to the edge and dove off.

It was a pretty nice dive, considering that he'd never done anything like that before. I don't think he was hurt at all. (Or if he was, he never admitted it.) But Glenn's bravado didn't motivate me to try it -- the only affect it had on me was that my cowardly retreat went mostly unnoticed; everybody was watching him.

Sometime later, Glenn enhanced his reputation as a daredevil by diving from the top of the WSC pool's heater hut into the 4-foot water at the shallow end of the pool. The hut wasn't all that close to the edge of the pool, either, so he spent most of his flight soaring over solid concrete. Somehow, though, he managed to make it into the water without killing himself.

Funny, but now that I think about it, just about everything Glenn ever did was followed by someone saying, "It's amazing he didn't kill himself."

(Of course, the only role he played in the movies we shot with the swim team DID end with his character killing himself. Hmmm. Food for thought.)

Anyway, back to Omaha Goal Meet memories: I also remember seeing "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes", which wasn't a bad movie, except that I always thought the title should be "The Computer THAT Wore Tennis Shoes". I was hoping to make out with one of the girls during the movie, but for some reason, they all waited until I had chosen a seat, and then selected their spots in a section that was at the opposite end of the theatre.

(Hmm. The same thing happened on the bus ride, too. Once, though, I actually got to sit next to Beth Alley, who I liked a lot. I kept trying to figure out a way to put the "moves" on her, but when even the old "yawn and put your arm around her" ploy ended up with a major bruise on my arm, I gave up.)

Finally, there's the memory of watching Roger Neugent swimming the 400IM. It was the final event of the meet, and as Roger's heat was in the water, Coach Deardorf was calculating the team scores. Roger was loafing the race, and at the end of the backstroke was in last place in his heat.

Coach Deardorf finished his calculation, and immediately proceeded to the edge of the pool. "Roger", he yelled. Neugent continued swimming his leisurely breaststroke, still in dead last. "ROGER!", Deardorf yelled. Neugent stopped swimming and popped his head out of the water. Without his glasses, Roger had no chance of seeing who was yelling at him, but he squinted over toward the deck anyway. "Huh?" he said. "We need 4th place!" Deardorf yelled. "Huh?"

"WE NEED FOURTH PLACE!!" Roger nodded, said "OK", and went back to swimming.

What followed was one of the most impressive efforts I've ever seen. With half the race already over, Neugent cranked out an outstanding comeback. Before the breaststroke was even over, he had taken over the desired 4th place, but since he couldn't see very well, he kept cranking. His freestyle was churning the water like a speedboat.

When he finished the race, Roger squinted up at the results board. Couldn't see it. He squinted at the surrounding lanes. Couldn't tell who had finished in which position. He turned toward the coach and shrugged his shoulders and held his palms up in the universal "Well?" gesture.

As witnesses to his fabulous effort, our entire team was jumping up and down on the deck. When we saw that he had no clue whether he'd achieved his goal, we all yelled in unison, "Neugent...YOU WON!" He nodded and gave us his famous grin. Then he crawled out and laid himself down on the deck to recover.

Someone took a photo of the exhausted warrior in this flattened position. The caption that accompanied that photo in the team yearbook was wholely appropriate: "God is Love. Love is blind. Neugent is almost blind. Therefore, Neugent is almost God."

If that's not impressive, I don't know what is.

How I Got the Nickname "Speed" ~1973

My high school swim coach had to bend the rules to get me a letter jacket. My college swim coach pleaded with me to "retire" so he wouldn't have to cut me. On the Wichita Swim Club, the four fastest boys in an age group were called the "A" relay -- I was usually on the "F" relay.

I was not a particularly fast young swimmer. Compared to my teammates, in fact, I totally sucked.

So how come I was the one who ended up with the nickname "Speed"?

A little background: The summer swim meet season had several important meets to train for. The first one was the "Air Capital Meet", which was held at our very own Wichita Swim Club pool at the Love Aquatic Center. [NOTE: Wichita is known as the Air Capital of the World, because so many big airplane companies have plants there -- Beechcraft, Boeing, Cessna, Lear, etc. The name has nothing to do with the quality of the atmosphere, which quite frankly smelled of stockyards and oil refineries.] Another was our team's "Goal Meet", which included a team bus trip to some exotic city, such as Omaha or San Antonio. (The Goal Meet was notable more for its opportunities for motel shenanigans and bus-ride romances than for the quality of its swim competition, but that's another story.) But the BIG MEET of the summer was the Region 8 Championships.

Don't ask me what Region 8 is, and don't ask me how many Regions there are. I've never seen a map with these mystical Regions listed on it. All I know is that the Region 8 Championships featured swimmers from Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas...and maybe some others. Who knows? But at least you knew there'd be swimmers there who, perhaps suffering some sort of visual disorder, couldn't distinguish between an individual and a group -- calling everyone "y'all". And it was an important meet for the Wichita Swim Club to win.

Since the Region 8 meet was the Big One for the summer, only the best swimmers could attend. There were qualifying times that you'd have to achieve within the summer in order to be allowed to sign up for the meet. And since I sucked, I was not able to hit those qualifying times.

So all the good swimmers shave down and head to some exotic place like Little Rock or Kansas City to compete for the honor of the team and the glory of the Championship Trophy, while the rest of us were left behind to wallow in our crumminess.

Or at least it could have been that way. But our leaders were too smart to let us do any wallowing. They allowed us to go to an alternate meet. Maybe we weren't good enough to go to Kansas City, but by golly, we could go to Manhattan instead. Whoopie!

(No, I'm not talking about the Manhattan where the Empire State Building is. I'm talking about the Manhattan where Kansas State University is. Smells like cows, it does, which may not sound too good, but is probably a better fragrance than the multi-faceted stench of the Air Capital.)

The Manhattan meet gave us an opportunity to compete and possibly achieve "A" times, which would allow us to go to a better class of meet the next year. And while it was certainly more prestigious to go to a championship meet, there were some benefits to swimming at Manhattan. 1) Since it was a "minor" meet, there were plenty of opportunities to goof off and create mischief, and 2) Becky Love was the coach who went with us. (Sigh. That, too, is another story.)

Because of the team's relaxed attitude about the meet, I decided to have some fun with it, right from the beginning. Normally, when you filled out event entry cards for the meet, you'd post your previous best time. Sometimes, if you were feeling frisky, you might even enter with a time slightly faster than you'd ever gone, just because you thought you might have improved since your last competition. But I took it several steps further. I entered each event with INCREDIBLY FAST times -- times that I not only had never gone, but that very few people anywhere had ever gone. They weren't quite Olympic-caliber entry times, but not that far off.

This would guarantee that at a meet like Manhattan, I'd been seeded as the favorite in every single event I entered. Such audacity in entry times required equivalent bravado in the box for "Name". I entered each event under the name "Speed" Heggy.

It was a joke. I honestly thought they toss out all my entries as being utterly ridiculous. I figured that I'd end up being shown on the heat sheet as a "No Time" entry, and would swim with the slowest entrants.

But just in case...

I went to a local T-Shirt Shop and had the word "SPEED" printed in big red letters on the front of the shirt. And once the meet started, I asked my teammates to loan me any medals they'd been awarded. Since I didn't swim the first few events while several of my quicker buddies did, I had almost a dozen medals in my possession before I stepped up to the blocks for the first time.

I pinned all of this hardware to the front of my "SPEED" shirt and walked up to the heating area as if I were God's Gift to Swimming. I tried to smile at my competitors with the type of condescension that showed utter contempt for their upcoming pitiful efforts to beat me. As I walked to the blocks, I noticied that there were more people with their eyes on the pool than there normally were for events such as this. I heard whispers from the spectators; "Look, there's that Speed guy. Do you think he's really that fast?" and "He doesn't look big enough or strong enough to do those times. I gotta watch this."

As the heat was called, I actually got up on the blocks still wearing the medal-covered T-shirt. I took my time removing it, making a great show of trying to flex my pitifully small muscles the way a bodybuilder would. I tossed the shirt back to my timer, smiled a big grin to the crowd, and gave all my new fans a little wave. Then I put on my competitor's game face. I tried to scowl and look like a guy who was about to pummel his competitors like the insignificant scum that they were. The starter spoke into the microphone. "Take your marks..."

Of course, I got my ass kicked. Badly. After all, I was swimming in the fastest heat, but I wasn't even close to being one of the fastest guys. Everyone else finished a loooonnnng time before I did.

When I finally reached the wall, the timer leaned over to me, obviously concerned. "You OK, Speed?" she asked. I took a deep breath and nodded. "It just hasn't been the same since I had that lung removed last week, so soon after my kidney operation" I said. She had no idea how to reply to that, so I grabbed my weighted T-shirt and headed back to the team tent.

By the end of the weekend, I had over 40 medals hung from my shirt. Thankfully, the spectators and citizens of Manhattan were willing to play along with my little joke. "Good luck, Speed," they'd say, and I'd salute them and wink. "Don't worry, Speed, you'll win the next one." They'd cheer every time I took the blocks.

The guys who actually did win the events weren't quite so thrilled with me, but I managed to escape the weekend without being beaten up, banned from the sport, or robbed of my T-shirt. And I ended up making some new friends, gaining a fun story to tell, and becoming something of a legend among the "F" relay crowd.

I eventually did give the medals back. But not the nickname.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

How I Became a Swim Coach ~1982

Once I had been asked to "retire" from the college swim team at KU, I began to swim on my own. At first, I just went to the school's evening lap swim and did occasional serious sets interspersed with serious flirting with the female lap swimmers. I was able to stay in reasonably good shape, and at the same time hone my skills with the ladies.

If you've been paying attention, you'll know that I actually didn't have any social skills to "hone", so maybe I should've used different words. How about "I talked with lady lap swimmers and discovered many of the world's most egregiously ineffective flirting methods." Still, I suppose that learning from a long uninterupted stream of horrid and embarassing social mistakes could be construed as "honing"...perhaps I'll let the statement stand.

One of these ladies was an excellent swimmer named Debbie Thornton. She was cute and friendly, and seemed happy to swim workout sets with me. I flirted as hard as I could, but got no response. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure she had no idea that I was even flirting with her. She was there to swim, and she enjoyed whupping me in those workouts.

But she was an older woman, alas. She graduated, and left me to swim my laps all alone. I quickly discovered that I needed the challenge of having other swimmers doing the sets with me. So, when I left KU, I once again looked for a team to swim with.

After short stints with the girls 12-and-under age group at Wichita Swim Club (it was an issue of workkout times, not ability -- really!), I ended up joining the West Branch YMCA team, where I moved up to swimming with 12-year-old boys. That worked fairly well, but still wasn't providing the cameraderie I preferred from my workout mates.

But I stuck with it until I moved to Denver. And that's when my career as a "Masters" swimmer really took off.

I moved into a small apartment on the Hampden frontage road. About 1/2 mile away, construction was underway on a brand new YMCA facility. I inquired about membership, liked what I saw, and signed up. When the pool opened, I was swimming laps from the very first day.

There were three of us; myself, a spicy redhead named Kerrin Long, and Jeff "the Ref" Dean. We started organizing our own workouts, and then asked the pool manager if they'd ever considered hosting an adult swim team. It turned out that the Aquatics Director had always wanted to be a coach. So she took over and started coaching our fledgling team.

Her name was Dawn, and she shared the coaching duties with her husband Dan. Though I had reason to suspect that Dawn sometimes experienced challenges when it came to telling the truth, she did know enough about swimming to be a pretty good coach. The team grew.

But as often happens in such organizations, the YMCA experienced an abundance of "mobility". Dawn/Dan found other opportunities and moved on. They were replaced by a college student -- a cute young blond named "Julie". Like Dawn, Julie had a pretty good head for swimming, but unlike her predecessor, was susceptible to other temptations. After the first few weeks, she developed a "relationship" with one of the guys on our team. We didn't mind the first subtle flirtations, but when Julie and Bob started engaging in heavy makeout sessions while the rest of us were trying to do a kick set, well, it became a bit distracting. Julie left the "Y" shortly thereafter.

The new coach was Randy, who could barely swim, but was an outstanding marathon runner. I guess they figured that his athletic experience gave him the ability to understand training methodolgies, etc. Heck, a workout is a workout, right?

He actually wasn't that bad. But there were a few frustrations. As we approached the date for the State Championship meet, Randy sat down with each of us to discuss goals. He asked me what times I wanted to hit at the State Meet. I replied that I'd like to break a minute in the 100 butterfly. "NO WAY!" he shouted. "NOBODY can go that fast!" He was aghast; he was convinced that I was insane, overconfident, and probably stupid, too. Nobody can go that fast.

Well, if our dear coach had bothered to look at last year's state results, he'd have seen that breaking a minute would probably place 4th or 5th in my age group. And if he'd have been paying attention to the times I could swim in workout, he'd have seen that my goal was not outlandish at all. But his fundamental lack of swimming knowledge, combined with his runner's arrogance made him blind to these realities. He was still upset with me after the meeting, and we both walked out of there shaking our heads.

He was gone two days later.

Then came Chris. Big guy, charismatic smile, couldn't swim a stroke. He was a hockey player. Again, the "well, he's an athlete, so he must be able to coach" philosophy sprang forth from the YMCA management. He pretty much just stood around on the deck and collected his paycheck while we went back to figuring out our own sets.

So when Chris quit a few weeks later, Jeff the Ref and I ran into the Director's office, fell to our knees and began begging. "Please, please don't hire another non-swimmer to coach our team. Please?"

"Hey," he said, "Softball season just ended, so we can get Frank Johnson to come in and take over your team. His softball squad won nearly half their games last season, so you know he's a good coach. He's even got his own whistle."

Amazingly enough, there was no violence. Jeff and I were firm, though, and continued to insist that the Masters team coach MUST have swimming experience. "OK, so where do swimmers come from?", the Director asked. Jeff and I looked at each other and reached a mutual decision. "We'll just do it ourselves," we said. The Director spent a moment in frantic thought. "Well," he said, "I might be able to swing it if you agreed to do this coaching as a volunteer thing..."

Hmmm. Hours of work for no pay? Extra duties without any compensation whatsoever? Having to actually prepare workouts instead of just showing up to swim?

Well, contrast those penalties with the thought of swimming for another incompetent coach. Compare a little extra work vs. another string of people who don't know what times are possible, and who wonder how you hold a competition with no helmets, sticks, or nets at the end of the pool. Sigh. We agreed to do the job.

And here it is, over twenty years later, and I'm still coaching. I love it. Jeff the Ref has also continued his connection with sports business; he has coached various teams over the years and is now the owner of a successful massage business.

As much as I owe to the great coaches I've had over the years, I guess I owe a bit to the crappy coaches, too. Thanks, folks. I hope you found something that's been as much fun for you as coaching has been for me. I am in your debt.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

Memorable Coaching—Various ~1965–1982

I never intended to be a swim coach. In fact, I never actually intended to become a swimmer. It just sorta happened. The basic decision path was this: hang around the house during the summer and risk being assigned chores vs. hang around the pool and live a life of sun, cannonballs, and snacks from vending machines. No brainer.

When Herbert the Pervert (my best friend in the neighborhood) suggested that I join the Harvest Park swim team at age 9, it wasn't that I really wanted to do it...it was more that I simply didn't have anything better to do. The rest of my life has been dramatically shaped by that rather ambivalent decision. What follows is a brief summary of memories of my swimming years and some of the coaches who participated in making me into who I am today.

Ed Poley, Harvest Park coach: This guy could swim 50 meters underwater, which to my 10-year-old mind was positively Houdini-esque. I also remember him telling us about the magical kingdom called the Wichita Swim Club, where workouts lasted for hours, spine-breaking discipline was enforced, and mythological swimming speeds were routinely attained. In describing the WSC swimmers, Ed once told us that the boys on that team were so muscular that their chests were THIS big (whereupon he made the universal Hooters gesture) -- to be honest, it kinda freaked me out to think of boys with cleavage.

Steve Miller, Harvest Park coach: Nice guy with fair complexion; always had the white zinc-oxide nose thing going on. I never learned what he did when he wasn't coaching snot-nosed Park Board swimmers, but I always imagined that he was practicing hard with a garage band and eventually became the guy who I heard on the radio singing "Fly Like an Eagle". Hey, it could be...

Brad Tompkins, Harvest Park coach: Brad was an impressive butterflyer, and a funny guy (two qualities that don't always go together). We had fun when he was the coach. A couple of years later, when I was being recruited to swim for the Friends University Swim Team, I saw Brad's name plastered all over their swim team's record board. I may have continued to be impressed with this public display of Brad's speed, except for the fact that I ended up at KU, and none of his FU records would've qualified him to make the travelling squad at KU. And speaking of KU...

Dick Reamon, University of Kansas coach: Nicknamed "The Duck" because of his nasal voice and waddling walk, Reamon coached the Jayhawks to 8 or 9 consecutive Big 8 Swimming Championships. I was not fast enough to make the team, but in 1972 there was no competition for pool time (Women's Swimming had not yet come to KU), so there was no "cut" -- everybody got to work out.

The KU swim team was a powerhouse. There were lots of fast guys. In my best event, the 500 freestyle, there were at least 4 guys who could beat me by more than 30 seconds. In other words, there was no chance in hell that I was going to compete for a spot on the starting squad.

There were about ten of us in this predicament. We loved swimming and wanted to be part of the team, but we lacked the talent, skill, discipline, and training it took to compete at the NCAA Division 1 level. Coach Reamon had no use for us as racers, but he knew that if he kept us around, we'd be happy to help with poolside chores that the scholarship athletes shunned. Therefore, he created a special practice group for the slow kids.

They called us "The Zoo". While we preferred to think that the name was applied because we were such a bunch of athletic animals, I suspect that it had more to do with the coach's unconscious wish that we were all locked up behind bars.

Whatever the reason for the name, though, the Zoo was a great group. Our most respected member was Vince Zubowicz, who couldn't swim very fast but kept the team GPA up by contributing his consistant 4.0 semesters. Less respected, but still a lot of fun were:

—Allan B. Caudle (the "B" stood for "BS" -- he later became a successful advertising weiner, sort of a sprint butterfly version of Darren Stevens)
—Jimmy "Tarzan" Jewel (his jungle yell could summon elephants from as far away as Topeka, which probably has nothing to do with the fact that I sorta dated his sister once),
—Steve Case (who might be the guy who founded AOL -- but probably not...cuz if he was, don't you think he'd have given cushy, high-paying jobs to all his old Zoo teammates? I'm just sayin'...)
—Joe "Inflated Résumé" Greenwell (constantly telling stories of his prowess with sports, money, women, etc. without ever offering a single shred of evidence to support his claims -- I have no idea if there was any truth to the rumor that he was later arrested for trying to sneak into a high-school girl's gym locker room, but no one who heard the rumor tried to argue on behalf of his character)
—Mickey "Fat Man" Canaday (see other entries within these chronicles for many details of Mickey's exploits)... and of course,
—Terry Heggy (your humble narrator)

We Zoo inmates were allowed to work out with the "real" swimmers during running and weight-lifting workouts, but had our own swim times (in the evening, when all the other guys were eating dinner). We sometimes had a coach (Bruce Bove, who was for some reason known as "Bovide"), but sometimes we just made up our own workouts. When the meets came, we were given the enviable tasks of installing touch pads, setting up timers' chairs, making sure that there were enough dry towels to go around, etc.

It was fun. I loved being part of the Zoo.

But in 1973, the winds of change blew in, carrying the subtle scent of Title IX. Women's swimming came to KU. Pool time became coveted, and the special hours set aside for the Zoo were no longer available.

Coach Reamon was very gracious about it. Though his "A Team" practices were already overcrowded, he generously granted us the opportunity to continue to try to make the squad. I'll never forget his words: "Terry," he said, "I'm not going to cut you from the team. You are welcome to join the First String workout squad. But you know as well as I do how difficult it will be for you to swim and compete with that elite group." He paused and took a deep breath. Then, in his famous quacking voice said, "I'm not going to cut you. But it would be in everyone's best interest if you were to quit."

Hey, I'm a team player. I am totally respectful of everyone's best interest. But I chose to call it "retirement" instead of "quitting".

Everyone on the Zoo made the same decision. Oh, we still installed touchpads and folded towels, but now we did it for both the mens and womens teams. And to tell you the truth, watching the women's team was actually a lot more interesting than watching the men. (But that's another story. We're talking about coaching influences here.)

The Duck retired soon afterwards as well. I understand that he later became a very successful high school sports coach there in Lawrence. He's a good man.

He was succeeded by Gary Kempf, who is my age and swam at KU when I did. Even though he was a phenomenal athlete and one of the hardest workers I've ever known, I never bothered to show him any special respect. Hell, he lived in my dorm, and he had the ugliest Roger Daltry haircut you've ever seen. He deserved all the name-calling and short-sheeting that Mickey and I dished out. Still does.

I know. I know. I've strayed a bit from my original subject of coaching influences. I have talked briefly in other articles about Doug Sidles, John Deardorf, and Bill Spahn -- all coaches for whom I have the utmost respect -- so I'm not going to share any other details about these fine gentlemen here.

Everyone I've mentioned here has been a positive influence on my own career as a swim coach. I learned from each and every one of them. But as influential as these role models have been, they are NOT the reason I began coaching.

That particular motivation came from my experience as a Masters swimmer. And that, my friends, is another story.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

Memorable Coaching—Becky Love ~1973

Why would someone want to be a swimmer?

• The workouts are brutal; most people think running 5 miles is tough -- we swam farther than that every single day during the summer.
• The chemicals are nasty; your hair gets bleached and brittle, you skin gets dry and flaky, and you walk around constantly smelling like a bottle of bleach. In the days before effective goggles (yes, I am that old), you typically suffered from burning, painful, bright-red vampire eyes. It's horrible.
• The sun is deadly. Oh yeah, you may look great as a deeply-tanned 15 year old, but a large percentage of us have had to undergo skin cancer surgery as we got older. Others heavy tanners end up with inelastic faces resembling alligator handbags. It can be hideous.
• Swimming is considered a "minor" sport. In high school, the only reason any cheerleaders came to any of our swim meets is that their charter required them to. If they didn't attend at least one "minor" sport event each season, they'd have to turn in their pom-poms. And never, under any circumstances would a cheerleader ever date one of us. (Of course, none of the other girls would date us either, but that's a different story. Sigh.)
• The gay guys might occasionally grope you when executing a flip turn. -- OK, this one might not bother some people, but it tended to make me a bit nervous.
• There's not much future in swimming. There are only a handful of people in the entire world who can actually make a living from being a swimmer. There's more money in almost any other sport; did you know that Kiki Vandeweghe was a world-record-holding swimmer before deciding to go into basketball? We even had a kid on the Wichita Swim Club (Chris Bogue) who was a national record holder in the 100 freestyle, but gave up swimming in order to go play football. In Wyoming. Geez!

So why would anyone want to become a swimmer? Well, there is the fact that the water supports you, so you're basically lying down the entire time you're exercising. That's good. And though I personally have never done it, I've heard that some people just pee in the pool whenever they need to go, rather than having to excuse themselves to the locker room -- what other sport has that feature? But the most compelling reason to become a swimmer can be summed up in four short words:

Girls in swim suits.

Girls with great bodies in swim suits. Spending the majority of your day hanging around with highly-fit women clad in a few scant ounces of nylon and lycra -- it does have its appeal.

Ahhh.

Wait. Where was I? Oh yeah. The appeals of swimming. Specifically, Becky Love.

When Becky was 10, she held national swimming records in several events. Her brothers were also excellent swimmers and their father, Bob Love, was a huge supporter of their participation. His company, the Love Box Company, became a major sponsor of the Wichita Swim Club, eventually being recognized when the spectacular new facility was christened as the "Love Aquatic Center" in the mid-1970s. Becky was older than me, though, so I never had the pleasure of swimming with her.

But she did become my coach for a while. What a blissful time that was!

You see, Becky was not only an outstanding athlete, but also a charming and attractive woman, with a gorgeous smile and a killer sense of humor. I was in high school (perhaps a freshman in college), and Becky was enough older to have the allure of wisdom and experience, but still young enough (and single enough) to allow us boys to fantasize that she might actually see us as "men".

We swam really hard, trying to impress her. We asked lots of questions about swimming technique, just to prolong our conversations with her. We dreamed of swimming to victory in the championship meet, just in the hope of getting a hug from our adorable coach as a show of congratulations.

Alas, it was not meant to be. Not long after I joined the swim team, Becky ended up moving to Arkansas, marrying some southern stud-muffin, and took over running one of the box company manufacturing plants. To this day, whenever I go box shopping, I always look for the Love Box brand name, and always think of my dear, foxy coach.

And there's one other thing I remember...

While Becky was an absolute sweetheart in all outward appearances, her creativity as a coach unwittingly revealed that she must have indeed had a dark side. A very dark side indeed. Her technique might have been effective from a stroke modification standpoint, but...ouch!

Here was Becky's torture technique: If a swimmer had a tendency to bend his or her elbows too much (at least in Becky's judgment), she would flash an evil grin, disappear into the murky depths of the coach's office, and re-emerge carrying a pencil and a roll of duct tape. The pencil was sharpened to a needle point -- on both ends -- and then duct taped across the inner bend of the offending swimmer's arm. If the elbow bent further than Becky thought appropriate, twin points of graphite would stab into his forearm and bicep, causing bloody puncture wounds with chunks of graphite floating around them.

It hurt like hell. But it did tend to teach you to straighten your arms. And guess what? You could do the same thing on the backside of your knees to fix a too-floppy kick. (Shudder!)

The training effectiveness of this category remains under dispute to this day. (It's especially suspect since the straight-arm butterfly technique has long since fallen out of favor.) But no one can accuse Becky of failing to make an impression on the swimmers who have ever tried this torturous technique. Or on swimmers who ever noticed how cute she was. Or both.

Perhaps Becky's coaching was one of the influences that led me into coaching as I got older. Perhaps not. I can honestly say that I've never actually tried to get anybody to try the double-pointed-pencil drill to straighten out their arms. But it makes a great threat...

Thanks, Becky. I hope you're happy.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

Memorable Coaching—The Dreaded "Trays" ~1973

As a teen-age athlete, you view your coach in several different ways. You look to your coach not only for instruction and direction in your sport, but also for inspiration, motivation, guidance, and even a significant amount of role-modeling. For a teen-age swimmer, the coach plays an important role in life, indeed; perhaps spending several more hours a day with the kid than his or her own parents do. If you like your coach, life is good and you pursue your athletic goals with vigor. If you don't like the coach, well, then life pretty much sucks.

(If your coach happens to be the gorgeous and appropriately-named Becky Love, you might also develop a total schoolboy lust-crush, but that is a different story entirely, and won't be discussed here.)

This story begins when I finally made the move from "Park Board" swimming into the AAU. The Park Board league was where everyone swam at their local summertime pool and competed to be the best in the neighborhood. The AAU (which has since been replaced by USA Swimming) was where you competed with the world. Park Board teams usually had high school kids coaching their teams; AAU clubs hired professional and experienced experts. AAU clubs had an enormously more structured and rigorous program. And they were much more expensive.

In Wichita, there were basically only two AAU teams that counted; the Wichita Swim Club (WSC) and the East Branch YMCA. While the East Branch Y had some quality coaches and some excellent swimmers, it was (and is) a generally accepted fact that WSC had the finest swimming program in Kansas.

Moving up from the Park Board, I really didn't care which team I joined. Either one would be a HUGE step up from the team I'd been on. But my buddies (Canaday, Odle, and Dillard) were members of WSC, so that's where I went.

The coach at the time was a gentleman named Doug Sidles. Doug was a great guy, and an excellent coach. We all enjoyed his sense of humor, his swimming expertise, his energy, and yes, even the fact that he worked our butts off. He became sort of a beloved surrogate father figure for many of us, and was one of the reasons we enjoyed our swimming experience so much.

Unfortunately, there was a scandal, and Doug ended up leaving the team. (By today's standards, it would probably be considered a minor scandal -- no one would need to leave the organization. Even at the time, most of the swimmers felt that Doug should have stayed. But it was not our decision. The coaching position was suddenly vacant.)

How do you replace a coach who was so well-liked by the team? At the time, many of us were not happy with the way it was handled, but in hindsight, they had found the perfect solution. They hired an "interim" coach, who was asked to get the team through the summer as the Board continued the search for the next "permanent" coach.

So who do you get? The obvious pool of available coaches was the group of local high-school swim team coaches. Only two of the schools had coaches that were considered to be appropriately knowledgeable about the sport; the others tended to be Driver's Ed instructors or Band Directors who needed the extra cash that coaching a "minor" sport could bring. (Our coach at West High would start each practice by saying "So, what do you guys think we should do?") Southeast High School was where most of the WSC kids would attend, so it probably wouldn't have been a good idea to hire their coach. The only other knowledgable coach was John Deardorf, who coached at South High.

We hated John Deardorf.

Why? Because we hated South High, and anything associated with it. We hated Deardorf particularly because he was so enthusiastic on the pool deck, and because he worked so hard to inspire his swimmers. Of course, the South High guys loved him, but we thought he was just obnoxious.

And besides, he was from South. Ewww!

Now, before I continue with the story of how badly we hated Mr. Deardorf, I must set the record straight. After I actually got to know him, I came to have tremendous respect for him, and learned that he was a great guy. A very likeable man, with a great deal of character and talent.

But at the time...

Everyone had loved Doug Sidles, so anyone who walked in as his replacement was bound to be treated as a vile interloper. We may not have been able to grow whiskers or vote yet, but we could still be mean and obnoxious to outsiders. We did not make it easy on poor John.

In retrospect, he must have understood that part of his job description was to endure the animosity of the swimmers; to get the bile out of our systems so that the "permanent" coach would be accepted and welcomed the following fall. What a monumentally tough thing to ask someone to do, but Deardorf charged right in and took the reins. And he found a unique and terrible tool with which to work this much-needed transformation: the dreaded TRAY.

What is a Tray, you ask? Well, it's no secret that increasing resistance during training results in an increase in the athlete's strength. Heck, that's the whole idea behind weightlifting. It makes sense. So some brilliant engineer decided to create a device that would help swimmers feel more resistance during swim practices. The Tray was the result.

Imagine a piece of sheet stainless steel, about 10 inches wide and 16 inches long. Fold it into an "L" shape, string a belt across it and strap it onto your torso in a way that makes an 8 x 10 inch segment of steel project outward from your belly button. When swimming, it becomes a sort of transverse shark fin on your underside. It creates resistance. It also totally screws up your stroke, your body position, and your ability to practice the movements you'd use in competition. But it does create resistance.

The only other thing that would cause as much damage to your stroke would be to swim lots and lots of distance butterfly. Once your arms die (which happens very quickly with butterfly), you simply end up teaching your body how to do the stroke incorrectly. You make all sorts of adjustments that do NOT help your racing form, but when you're that tired, it's the only way to survive.

So John had us do distance butterfly with the Trays on. 800 butterfly with Trays. 10 x 200 butterfly with Trays. No-breather butterfly with Trays. Let's just see how far you can go...butterfly with Trays.

I'm pretty sure the team was unanimous in wanting to see how many trays could be stuffed into the coach's esophagus.

Oh, don't misunderstand...we did plenty of butterfly without the trays, too. Plenty of stroke-ruining, brain-cell-destroying, oh-God-please-kill-me-now, #$@%*&! butterfly. Oh yeah, we got physically stronger due to all this resistance training, but I'm sure that more than a few of us have paid a lot of good money to a gaggle of psychotherapists to help us recover from the emotional scars that the #$@*&! trays left upon our fragile teen-age mindsets.

[Deep cleansing breath. OK, I'm better now.]

After that dreadful summer, Bill Spahn came in to take over. When Bill said that we were no longer going to use the trays, there was much rejoicing. And when Deardorf left, he took any remnants of our anger over Doug's departure with him. We loved Bill, without reservation, and the team prospered magnificently under his leadership.

And John Deardorf made it possible. Thank you John. We owe you.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

Creative Laziness ~1974

We thought we were getting away with murder.

Though the swimmers knew that Coach Spahn was an intelligent guy, we really believed that we could fool him at will. We thought that we were so stealthy and clever that he’d never catch on.

(Many years later when I became a swim coach myself, it finally became obvious to me that Spahn hadn’t been fooled for a second. He was letting us get away with stuff. We thought that the other end of the pool was far enough away to be outside his optical range, but believe me, from anywhere on the pool deck the coach can see everything!) But… an important component of leadership is the ability to know when to crack down, and when to look the other way. Spahn consistently showed such leadership skills.

Either that or he really did need to gulp down that giant cup of coffee every morning before his eyes became functional. I guess we’ll have to ask him.

Anyway, here’s a partial list of the transgressions we thought were going undetected:

The Hose

Rick Hall was one of the popular swimmers, probably due to his enthusiastic desire to embrace anything new and “hip”. We called him “The Trucker”, which was a reference to his immersion in cultural phenomena (see Dead, Grateful), not a reference to any particular vehicle-handling skills. In fact, he drove an Olds Cutlass, not a truck, but even so, riding with him was usually a white-knuckle experience. Everyone loved the Trucker, but I doubt anyone would ever hand him the keys to anything bigger than a station wagon.

The Trucker was a sprinter; he liked swimming short distances. Oh, he was certainly able to compete in longer events like the 200 butterfly, but he didn’t enjoy it. Nor did he relish doing long sets during workout. Unfortunately, Coach Spahn fervently believed in the value of long sets, and assigned them on a regular basis. Solution? The hose.

Trucker chopped up an old garden hose into sections about 18 inches long. He only shared them with a few special friends; folks he knew could appreciate the benefits of avoiding distance sets (i.e., the lazy guys). He explained how they worked: “Dude, you just put the hose on the bottom at the far end of the pool during warmup. Then when you get tired, man, just pick it up off the bottom. It’s so far out, man…you can stay underwater and breathe through it. Whoa…Righteous!”

So for the next few weeks, guys would disappear for a while during tedious sets. Well, OK, they didn’t really disappear – you could see a dark blob underwater, spouting a short section of green hose that was incongruously poking up into the air next to the lane rope at the far end of the pool. Mickey (the Fat Man) would take a turn, then Neugent, then Ulffers, and so on. If there was only one hose at a time, Spahn could never figure it out. Yeah, right.

Eventually, though, everyone discovered that it was actually hard work to suck air through a thin and smelly rubber hose while simultaneously fighting natural buoyancy and trying to avoid the swimmers who were actually doing the set. Choking was not uncommon, and getting kicked was a virtual certainty. Heck, it was easier to just swim the dang set.

The Trucker regretted the demise of his brilliant plan. “Man,” he said, “this is bringing me down. I’m bummin’, dudes.”

But there were alternatives:

Stationary Kicking

In the early days of the Wichita Swim Club, the organization was not able to afford the high-tech Styrofoam kickboards that you see at most facilities. Instead, some generous donor had provided the team with wooden kick boards made from big slabs of pine. They were much larger than the kickboards most swimmers use today, but were heavy to begin with. And the more they were used, the more waterlogged they became. Pushing one of these barges down the pool was just plain hard.

Solution? Just stay in the same place. I was a terrible kicker to begin with, so it didn’t take much for me to discover that with only a slight adjustment in the angle of my foot, I could kick my legs all day long without actually going anywhere. In fact, with some experimentation, I developed the ability to actually go backwards while appearing to be kicking in the normal fashion. I could generate a splash without creating momentum.

So, every time Spahn ordered a long kick set, I’d kick normally down to the far end of the pool, then vigorously paddle in place until everyone else had done the entire distance and it was time to head home. I’d end up traveling only two lengths of the pool while everyone else did 16 or 20.

Did I actually end up doing less work? I don’t know -- probably not. But sometimes, it’s just important for a teenager to feel that he’s getting away with something, I guess.

The Fence

One summer, Spahn decided that we needed to do massive amounts of distance swimming. Lots of 1500s (about a mile straight), scads of 800s, and even a significant amount of (gasp!) 3000s.

It took me about 45 minutes to swim a straight 3000. At the time, we deduced that either Spahn expected miraculous results from this über-training technique, or that he was a sadistic psychopath who couldn’t find enough cute little bunnies to torture and was therefore forced to take out his hostility on us. We all liked Spahn, so we assumed the former. (I’m not sure the jury ever actually returned with a verdict, though.)

(On second thought, it might be that he just wanted us to be occupied for 45 minutes, which would give him time to, oh, I don’t know…nap? I never thought of this before, but I do believe that there was a direct correspondence between the days Spahn didn’t have his big coffee cup and the days we did 3000s. Hmmm.)

The pool was surrounded by a nice, solid wooden fence. I’m not sure why a fence was needed here; it wasn’t preventing any unauthorized access to the pool (see “Dipping, Skinny”). It may have only been erected to provide a place to hang advertisements for the pool’s sponsor, the Love Box Company. In any case, it made a nice visual barrier when the need arose -- which it certainly did every time we were told to do one of those damn 3000s.

We’d swim a couple of hundred yards…just far enough to make sure that the coach was no longer paying close attention. Then it was a mad sprint to leap from the pool, charge to the fence and scramble over it. Then, for the rest of the set, you could sit behind the fence, keeping track through a knothole. Toward the end of the assigned distance, it was a simple matter to hop back over the fence and finish out the swim, making sure to act really, really tired at the end of the thing.

There were a few problems with this plan, though.
— One, the mad dash-and-climb effort itself was quite strenuous – and there was always the danger of splinters.
— Two, the far side of the fence was a field; there were scratchy plants and biting insects. You try strolling through a cornfield in nothing but a Speedo…
— Three, in addition to being mostly naked and barefoot, you’d be wet. If there was a breeze, it could get cold. And if you stayed out of the water long enough to dry, you had to deal with that whole chlorine-encrusted skin itch problem.

Yes, we did suffer for our pursuit of easy living. And Spahn just watched, sipped his coffee, and let us think we were clever.

Sadistic psychopath, indeed.