Fort Collins – At a prep swim meet, there’s water, water everywhere. But one tiny drop told the story. It was a happy tear glistening in the eye of a coach.
“I’m going to cry,” said Stacy Moore, whose team of boys from Monarch High School finished third at the Colorado 5A championships. “Sometimes, I feel more like a mom rather than a coach to these kids.
“As a swim coach, you have the privilege of watching these boys grow up in front of your eyes. It’s the coolest thing. But it’s hard to let them go.”
Boys who tentatively took the blocks four years ago climbed out of the pool Saturday as men having the time of their young lives. State records tumbled. Full of bare-chested pride, Regis won the team championship. Heritage sophomore Mark Dylla was smoke on the water, finishing first in two individual events.
But enough about them. These boys had their day of glory. The rose on the pillow this morning is for every mother who has ever awakened a future swim champ for practice at 5 a.m. Any woman who tries talking to a teenager at that hour deserves a medal.
Most prep champs got their feet wet before they could read a heat sheet or recall where those goggles disappeared five minutes ago. So here is to every mother who has washed and dried enough beach towels in a week to gift-wrap an elephant, sweated in the dead of winter at an indoor pool steamier than a sauna or endured a single weekend youth meet that lasts longer than the Boston Marathon.
“Swimming swallows your whole life,” said Regis sophomore John Buckley, who placed fifth in the 100-yard breaststroke. The championship heat took him barely a minute of oxygen deprivation to complete. That’s nothing. Trish Buckley conservatively estimates she has already spent 1,600 hours of her life on pool decks while her son raced to touch the wall.
Any mother of a competitive swimmer able to keep her head above water has survived a task more mind-boggling than dog-paddling across the English Channel.
How to best describe any female adult who would volunteer to get involved in a sport, where a common initiation rite is babysitting a tent full of 6-year-old boys wearing Speedos and popping Skittles?
“A glutton for punishment? That’s what a swim mom is. Oh, yeah,” said Arapahoe freestyle specialist Eric Anderssen, who helped the Warriors finish second in the team standings. “At 5 in the morning, six days a week, my mom is the one who drags my body out of bed, throws things at me to get up and moving – whatever it takes.”
Politicians love soccer moms. The mother of Rockies slugger Todd Helton’s perfect swing is the batting practice he took from the first lady of his childhood house. After a big man on campus scores a touchdown, he plops down on the bench, waves at the TV camera and shouts, “Hi, ma.”
Moms are the great American hero. We’re all constantly awed by their maternal magic, whether it touches a boy who fights for every C on his report card or the girl who sings her heart out in a high school production of “Oklahoma.”
But, when it comes to sports, if you’re asking me to keep score, swim moms are tougher than the rest.
“As freshmen, swimmers are all deer-in-the-headlights immaturity. But they grow into such incredible young men,” said Gretchen McSwain, a mother of teens and a swim coach at Monarch. “By senior year, it’s almost like they’re growing wings.”
Water wings.
Whether a competitor finishes No. 1 or 16th, surviving the countless hours of work required to reach the state championship is its own reward. Know what might be the most satisfying moment of the prep swim season? The day after.
“It’s Sunday, thank goodness,” said Joan Anderssen, whose son did the freestyle in enough chlorine during the past 12 months to bleach the Washington Monument.
Swim practice? Never on Sunday.
For once, the alarm clock of the swim mom will not buzz at 15 minutes before dawn.
Happy Mother’s Day.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
