Over Fifty Years of Tualatin Hills
Swim Club Championship Swimming
Olympic Trials Info Updated August
2008
By
James L. Butler
Contents
Section
I The Foundation
Years 1957
- 1973
Section II
Transition
Years 1973
- 1986
Section III The
Rise To National
Standing
1987 - 1998
Section IV The Rise
To International
Standing 1998
- 2007
Section V What
Does The Future Hold?
2008 -
????
Section VI THSC Coaching
Time Line
Section VII THSC Major Events
Time Line
Section VIII List of THSC
Olympic Trials Qualifiers, Events
Section IX Master’s
Times of former THSC Swimmers
Section X Additional
Information About Former THSC Swimmers
Section XI Historical
Document Contribution Acknowledgments
Section XII Supplemental
information after 2007 season
Section I
The Foundation Years
1957 – 1973 Rod Harman Head
Coach
Destiny is what happens when the best of plans
collide with fate. In the spring of 1957 Margaret Penn was
already excited about the beginning of the school year in September
as she had landed her dream job as the new head coach of the
Beaverton High School Swim Team. But fate intervened in the
form of a near fatal car accident that left Margaret unable to take
the job she had planned for. Instead, she would be spending
months using the pool for physical therapy.
Rod
Harman was also looking forward to pursuing a career teaching and
coaching in 1957 after serving his country in both WWII and
Korea. Margaret’s misfortune presented Rod with the
opportunity to coach the Beaverton team. During the summer of
1957, fate put Margaret and Rod in the same pool at the same
time. Rod was working for the THPRD as a lifeguard to pick up
some summer cash and Margaret was getting her physical
therapy.
Rod
watched some of the young swimmers splashing through their lessons
with great interest. He thought they could be developed into
good competitors for his high school team, but there was not a
program available to coach them. Rod spoke with the THPRD
officials, some of the kids and some of the parents. The
result was the formation of the Tualatin Hills Swim Club with Rod
Harman as head coach and four swimmers in
training.
Watching Rod work with his new team stirred the
embers of Margaret’s dreams to coach a swim team. She
talked to Rod and began to help him work with the new
swimmers. Rod was immediately impressed with Margaret’s
intense focus on stroke technique. By the end of the first
season, Margaret was officially named as Rod’s assistant
coach. That began a twenty year run of their partnership in
building the strongest swim program in the Northwest. The
T-Hills duo was separated in 1977 when Rod had to make the hardest
decision in his life. He left the club to devote more time to his
high school teaching and coaching career. Margaret would carry
the tradition on for another 17 years until she finally retired in
1995. Rod is still coaching swimming at Southridge High School
and Margaret still follows the club news from her Beaverton Lodge
Apartment.
The
growth of the T-Hills club was phenomenal and the quality of the
swimming at meets impressed even the MAC dynasty. The Multnomah
Athletic Club swim team had ruled the Pacific Northwest for years
and thought they had little to fear from the little Beaverton based
club. It raised a few eyebrows in 1959 when Rod Harman’s
Beaverton High Swim team won the Girls State Swim Meet title with
half the swimmers coming from Rod’s T-Hills
team.
Three years later the MAC coaches and swimmers
were admiring the T-Hills upstarts from second place in the
regionals! (What we now call the Sectionals.)
The
T-Hills success left the mighty MAC stunned and in denial. But
that was nothing compared to what it did to the Seattle swimming
association. They went into outright rebellion. It was
one thing for a club like the MAC with its 70 year history and
great sports tradition to dominate the Northwest. After all,
they had produced Carolyn Wood, 1960 Olympic gold medal winner.
(Although Rod Harman was Carolyn’s High School coach at
Beaverton High!) It was quite another for an upstart community
team from a place called Beaverton to stomp on them. The
Seattle teams invoked the law of large numbers strategy and
combined three separate swim clubs into one mega club called
Cascades Swim Club with about 350 swimmers. The move made them more
competitive for awhile. But the T-Hills gang was there to
stay.
A
lot of things were different in the early days of the
club. Annual dues were $30.00. Swimmers, well their parents,
paid their own meet entry fees. And the club’s
supplemental income came from the candy machines in the lobby of
the pool entry. Think that sounds cheap? Check out these facts from
1957: House: $20,000, Average income:
$4,494, Ford car: $1879-$3408, Milk: $1.00 per gallon,
Gas: $.24 per gallon, Bread: $.19, Postage stamp: $.03, Can of
Libby’s peaches, 17 oz.: $ .25, Swanson TV dinner: $.75
Vermont Maple Syrup, 12 oz bottle: $.33. Swimming was a big
financial commitment then just as it is now.
The swimmers looked a little
different as well. The girls squeezed into full, thick one
piece suits with modesty panels while the boys had thick, tight on
the leg trunks. And the swim strokes were different. The
breast stroke and butterfly were a combined single stroke yet to
evolve into two separate competitive strokes. (Don’t ask me
how they managed that!) The pool looked different as well. The lane
lines were ropes with floats every few feet. They were a lot
easier to grab onto in practice during the back stroke.
Attitudes toward competitive
swimming were also evolving, especially for young women. Head
coach Rod Harman once received a phone call from the head of the
AAU swimming division warning him about over training young
women. She
stated it was a scientific fact no
girl should race over 50 yards because it would cause permanent
damage to their reproductive systems. (Try that one on one of
the coaches today!)
Available practice facilities were
even harder to find then than they are now. There was no 50
meter pool anywhere. The closest was a 50 yard outdoor pool in
Hillsboro. (It’s still there.) As the T-Hills club grew,
it utilized every pool in the Beaverton-Hillsboro area at one time
or another. Rod remembers the first time he took the young
swimmers to the outdoor Raleigh Hills pool. It had no lane
ropes, no lane markings on the bottom of the pool, and, of course,
no roof. The first time the young swimmers jumped in and tried
circle swimming was like watching a swarm of water beetles
skittering back and forth. Collisions were frequent and head
up swimming became the norm. Rod could not come up with a
solution, but the kids did. They set up landmarks outside the
pool as lane makers to guide them and after a couple of days were
circle swimming in neat lines tighter than at their home
pool.
Some things have not changed in
fifty years. Rod Harman figured the formula for building a
great swim club involved an equal mix of great swimmers, great
coaches and great parents. You think there is a lot of
volunteer work in running a meet now? Rod recalls hosting a
meet with 625 swimmers entered. The volunteers were using stop
watches and hand typed mimeo-graphed heat sheets. Speed typists in
the school lobby produced final results for posting before the
following event was completed! And all of them were family
volunteers.
Hard training, travel meets and
special team events have also been around since the
beginning. Rod and Margaret would take swimmers to meets in
Boise Idaho, Seattle and Spokane Washington, plus Northern and
Southern California. And it was not just for pool
meets. They did open water meets! The Penn family had a
lodge on American Lake near Ft. Lewis, Washington. Almost the
entire swim club would go up to the lake for two weeks each
summer. Some kids stayed in the lodge and other camped out on
the grounds with their families. They had a great time but it
was no vacation from swimming.
The first weekend of the 14 day
trip the entire team competed in the Green Lake Mile in Seattle.
Then they spent two weeks training in the open waters of
American Lake. They did three workouts a day and one of their
sets was to swim the butterfly all the way around the island just
offshore from the lodge. It was only about a mile! The
butterfly was Margaret’s favorite stroke to teach and she
would not allow a swimmer to move up from her developmental squad
until they had mastered it. She established a tradition of
T-Hills strong fly performances that has carried through to this
day. But that was not the finishing touch for the
‘vacation’. They wrapped up the trip by swinging
by Spokane for the Cordelane Mile. Rod remembers they had one
young lady win both of the open water events one year! That
young lady was Jani Penn, Margaret’s daughter. Margaret
commented that staying on course was the key to doing well in the
open water events and Jani was exceptional at it because of all the
lake training. Those butterfly sets paid off too as Jani
was the 1960 OSAA Champion in the 100 Fly with a 1:16.3.
Another thing that has not changed
in fifty years for T-Hills is a winning attitude. Rod said
they had a young lady take 5 second place finishes at one of their
first trips to a long course meet in Redding,
California. Pretty amazing considering it was the first time
she had ever seen a 50 meter pool! Then there was Cathy
Jamison who qualified for nationals at the age of thirteen in the
breast stroke and won 4 straight State Championships in the 100
breast for Wilson High School. After graduating from Wilson
she went on to swim with the Santa Clara Swim Club, make the
Olympic team, and finish fifth in the 200 breast in the 1968
Olympics. There was also a young man named Doug Towne who went
to the nationals then later attended Arizona where he was an NCAA
champion in the 500 SCY free and 1000 SCY free in 1981. One
boy and one girl from the Rod Harman years still hold THSC records,
the oldest records for the club. As two of Margret’s
youngest stars, the young man, Jeff Garr swam the 8 and under 100
SCY free in 1:13.00 and the 25 SCY breast in 18.50 in
1976!! Brent Lang remembers Jeff. “The first meet I
ever swam at Jeff Garr won every event. He later moved to
Bellevue and swam at Stanford. But when I was starting out he
was the unbeatable stud.” The young lady, Elaine Sang,
demonstrated Margret’s passion for the butterfly by sprinting
to a 15.95 finish in the 25 SCY fly way back in 1975. The
entire Sang family was very involved in the team with both Elaine
and sister, Michelle being fantastic swimmers. Michelle is
now a doctor at OHSU.
Looking back, Rod says the greatest
change in competitive swimming since 1957 has been the science of
it. Words like hydro-physics, cross-training and stroke
segmentation are now being heard in training rooms as often as
dehydration and attitude. In the fifties, it was all hit or
miss. Coaches tried things to see if swimmers got
faster. If they did, they kept doing it. If they did not,
they tried something else. Margaret and Rod both said they
grew with the team learning as much about swimming as the
swimmers. He recalled one season he nearly doubled the
workouts for his sprinters and watched them get slower and
slower. Then he read about some research on the need for
recovery workouts to allow broken down muscles to rebuild. He
completely reworked his training program and the sprinters got
faster than ever. He also remembered the sports commentator
for the 1972 Olympics describing one of Mark Spitz’s gold
medal freestyle swims. The commentator said “The only thing
wrong with Mark’s swimming is he keeps rocking his shoulders
from side to side,”
In 1973, the club had grown so
large and Rod’s commitments to Beaverton High School had
increased so much they asked the board to get a head coach to run
the club. Skip Rogenbill
was head coach April-August, Stoddart Smith head coach from
Sept-Nov. of 1973. In December of 1973 Gary Leach was brought on board and began a 26 year
stretch has Head Coach and Head Age Group Coach for
T-Hills. In 1975, Rod left the care of the club he had
created on to Gary and Margaret. But Rod will always be
remembered in T-Hills, especially by the kids swimming in the
Harman Swim Center, named after the THSC
founder.
Section II
The Transition
Years
1973 – 1986 Gary Leach and
Alan Cardwell Swap at Head Coach
Rod’s influence on T-Hills
did not end with his departure as head coach. He was on the
committee to help TPHRD decide what to do with the bond money they
had just received to build additional aquatic
facilities. There was heavy pressure to build two or three
small community pools that would have been useless as competitive
training facilities. Rod and several other swim team coaches
including Olympic Medal winner Carolyn Wood made presentations to
the THPRD committee on the benefits a 50 meter pool would bring to
the community. The coaches won the day and construction began
on the facility in 1980.
Gary
Leach ran the club with Margaret Penn for a couple of years but it
was getting too big for all part time coaches to handle. Alan
Cardwell came onboard to help with the coaching and discussions
about moving the club to a full time professional head coach
began. I wonder if they had any inkling they were coaching a
future Olympian along with a swimmer with a club record that would
last 32 years and counting.
Doug
Wells remembers those years well.
. “As for me, I pretty much
learned to swim under Margaret Penn at the Beaverton pool, swam
with THSC and swam for Sunset High School as did Eric, Brent,
Elaine and Michele.”
Now
Doug is reliving the early years with his son, Jamieson (9 yrs old)
who is swimming with the Thunderbolts this year in the OW Gold
group.
Alan
Cardwell came onboard to help with the coaching and discussions
about moving the club to a full time professional head coach
began. During Alan Cardwell’s first year at THSC
(1982-83) he worked with the developmental and age group swimmers
at the 50M swim center. He was coming from the Head Coach
position at Starlit Aquatic, a nationally ranked team in Fairfax,
Va. (DC metro area). He landed at THSC due to his wife
entering med school at OHSU. During the 82-83 season Gary,
Alan and the BOD began to talk about how to take the program to the
next level. Since Gary’s “main” job was his
position with THPRD as an Aquatics professional, he was not in a
position to commit the extra hours that it would take to make this
transition from a club with part time coaches to a club with a full
time professional coach. So in the 82-83 season Gary became
the Head Coach/Age Group Coach and Alan became the Senior Squad
Coach. Because of assuming increasing responsibilities
related to
the
operations of the club, the next year (83-84) the titles changed to
Alan as Head Coach/Senior Squad Coach and to Gary as Senior
Prep/Age Group Coach with the same structure for the 84-85
season, Alan’s final season.
The
Board of Directors was very active in the running and planning of
the club, working closely with the coaches. They were excited
about the growth of the team, the quality of the swimming and the
prospect of being nationally recognized.
THSC
Board Presidents:
1982 Miles
Nelson
1983 Judy
Hathaway
1984 Steve
Brenner
1985 Tom
Himstreet
Other THSC coaches during this
period:
1982
Donna Brickley, Margaret Penn (Harman), Ruth McNamera
1983
Margaret Penn (Harman), Donna Brickley, Darcy Winslow
1984
Gene Gill, Lura Ahern, Margaret Penn (Harman)
1985
Gene Gill, Cindy Verner (Aloha), Margaret Penn
(Harman)
As
the end of Alan’s tenure approached, Gary and Alan worked
with the board to put together a Head Coach search committee to
seek a head coach who could continue to grow the team in numbers
(between 1982-85 THSC had grown from 115 to 160 swimmers) and
continue to move from a regional to a national level program.
Interestingly, they all felt that Ben Davis would be a good
fit for THSC. Ben came from High Point, North Carolina as
Alan was headed to his new club for the next fours years (his
wife’s residency period) Mecklenburg Aquatic Club in
Charlotte, North Carolina. I wonder if their planes passed
each other on their way to their new positions.
Gary Leach was the head coach that
moved into the new fifty meter pool with T-Hills. In fact,
Gary had his senior group swimming in the pool before it was open
to the public. Accounts of how finished it was when the first
swimmers entered the water vary, but everyone agrees there was
water in the pool. Cold water. Really cold. Gary and
Margaret provided continuity for the kids during the head coach
transition to Alan Cardwell in 1983 which allowed Alan to focus on
the senior group which was maturing into a powerful team of
swimmers. A couple of young men named Brent and Eric Lang were
among them. If you look at the THSC records, you will see their
names still up there with some of the oldest records in the club,
particularly the relay records. But their individual records
were set after Alan had left. Not so for the young Mark
Collier who sprinted to a 13.91 in the 8 and under 25 SCY free in
1983 and the young lady, Jody Smith, who pegged the 9-10 100 LCM
back in 1:16.76 which has stood as both a club and state record
since 1979! You will also see Brent Lang’s name in the
Gold Medal winner’s circle for the 1988 Olympics and in the
NCAA Scholastic All American list for his outstanding academic
performance at the University of Michigan.
Brent remembers training in the
L-section of the Beaverton pool under Coach Penn’s watchful
eye. The older kids were training in the lap section at the
same time which often sent waves into the L-section big enough to
swamp the youngsters. Margaret did a lot of mid-swimming
stroke instruction so kids got used to stopping in the middle of
the pool to listen to her instructions. When Eric and Brent
swam in their first swim meet, Margaret walked along the edge of
the pool waving them on. Eric thought she was telling him to
fix his stroke and stopped in the middle of the race to get his
instructions. What he heard was “FINISH THE
RACE!” So he did. (NOTE: Remember this story for later
reference.)
One of Brent’s team mates at the 1988 US
Olympic Trials was Alexis Brenner. She had to make a gutsy
swim having torn her ACL earlier that season. It was a major
interruption in training, but there was no way she was going to
miss the opportunity to be there. In true T-Hills fashion, she
went, she swam, she finished. She was not first but just being
there made her a winner.
She has some great memories of
Coach Cardwell and the T-Hills team of the eighties.
“Alan was an enthusiastic young coach who
endeavored to know his athletes both as swimmers and as
individuals. Perhaps influenced by his wife Maura, who
attended medical school at OHSU while her husband coached at THSC,
Alan adopted a “total athlete” approach to his
coaching, incorporating cross-training and nutrition into the mix
for his swimmers. Pre-season training included cross-country
runs around the THPRD 50-meter complex and surrounding roadways, as
well as intensely competitive ultimate Frisbee games. One
season, Alan challenged his athletes to follow the then popular
“Pritikin Diet” – a diet with many benefits, to
be sure, but which also included delectable entrees like the
infamous “bean lasagna”. Although his culinary
choices may have been questionable, Alan certainly instilled a
sense of camaraderie among his swimmers through several senior team
retreats to venues which included the Oregon coast and Kah-nee-tah,
as well as with his knowledge of team cheers (including cowbells!)
heretofore unheard in the Northwest. It was with much regret
that the team said goodbye to Alan Cardwell when he made his move
back to the southeast so that wife Maura could pursue her
residency.”
Some
other swimmers in those years Brent, Alexis and Alan remember
are:
Shannon Heringer, Amy Hathaway, Darla Lamper,
Jennifer Crisp, Natasha Cathery, Brenda & Brooks McCartney,
Gayle Camburn, Rachael Lopes-Diaz, Mike Pruett, Julie Himstreet,
Chris Doyle, Ethan Nelson, Danita Chandler; Tracie, Torie, Tammy,
Christi, Kelli & Brady Childs, George Koch, Mark & Lonnie
Nadal, Can Ergenekan, Sonja Gerkens, Anneke Haslett, Tim State, Tom
Chang, Justin & Mark Yee, Lisa & Laura Wright, Marsha
Trachi, Bruce Davis, Lisa Urban, Kari Recob, Marco Voglino, Vladko
Drobny, Eliza Werth, Karen Hansen
Section III
The Rise To National
Standing
1987 – 1998 Ben Davis
Head Coach
The foundation work by Rod Harman
and Margaret Penn Fetz, the discipline and steady hand of Gary
Leach, the elevation of the senior level by Alan Cardwell and the
leadership in the pool by Eric and Brent Lang had put T-Hills age
group swimming at the top of the game by the end of the 1984
– 1985 season. The THSC board of directors and coaches
thought it was time to put the frosting on the cake and brought in
Ben Davis to develop a Senior National Squad. This made THSC
one of a handful of swim clubs in the USA that could develop a
swimmer from first competitive strokes to Olympic level
swimming. Ben has been coaching since he was 20 years old
including 4 years as an assistant at the University of
Alabama. He was used to being around winners in and out of the
pool.
Having Brent Lang on the squad
along with four other 1988 Olympic Trials qualifiers, Leah Land,
Mark Thompson, Matt Brown and Alexis Brenner, helped give the
Senior Nationals instant credibility in the swimming
world. But Brent was only there the first year and even
then it was not all fun and games. Ben remembers his first
regional meet with the team in Tacoma in July. It was in an
outdoor pool and the highest the temperature got in 4 days was 55
degrees. This was not a problem he had to contend with in
Alabama often, especially in July. But the northwest swimmers
were up to the challenge.
The trash cans positioned around
the pool and grounds in those days were 55 gallon oil drums with
the tops cut off. They were great for collecting trash and
even better for burning it! About half way through the first
day of the meet, one of the trash cans mysteriously caught on fire
and was immediately surrounded by shivering swimmers. Within
minutes almost all the trash cans were catching on fire. The
only problem was trash burned quickly and fuel was in short
supply. It was a tough meet for the swimmers, coaches,
officials and spectators but it was the easiest meet in history for
the clean-up crew! (Good thing the bleachers were
metal.)
Brent Lang’s last year with the team was
the first year of the next T-Hills swimming prodigy, Bryan
Addleman. Bryan would spend 11 years with T-Hills and finish
with the 1996 Olympic trials. His name still commands several
spots on the THSC Club Records banners. But there were many
great swimmers during the Ben Davis years that piled up an
incredible record of State and Regional/Sectional titles. The
THSC coaching team of Margaret Penn, Gary Leach and Ben Davis won
the Oregon LSC title every year Ben was there and won the Northwest
Region title seven times. He also coached on four United
States National Teams and coached the 1996 Turkish Olympic Team.
All of which earned him nine Awards of Excellence from the American
Coaches Association.
The T-Hills swimmers could compete
anytime, anywhere, under any conditions with
confidence. Evidence of that can be found all over the club
records banners. 19 swimmers, 11 male and 8 female, from the
years Ben Davis was head coach still hold club records, some of
which are still state records as well. Seven of his swimmers
competed in U.S. Olympic Trials and one brought home a Gold
medal. (See all the results at end of this article)
What
Bryan Addleman remembers most though are the team mates and
friendships, especially in the Senior National
Group. His teammates included Andy Brown, Jenny Acheny,
Pilar Tyson, Lisa Urban, Casey Harmon, Paul Slotemaker, the Lindsey
Brothers, Matt Brown, Can Ergenekan (aka "Egon"), Josh Snyder, Leah
Land, Bruce Davis, Alexis Brenner, Mark Thompson, Kristen Anderson,
Pat Kavan, Christie Wilson, Vladko Drobney, Keith Vitko, Janet Ely
and Kelly Bland.
Andy
Brown was swimming a lifetime best in the 1000 at a Husky Invite
when he
stopped at the 800 thinking he was done, rested,
then after Ben got his attention along with everyone else’s
at the pool; he finished the race. His reward was to barf up
his dinner that night in Bryan’s hotel room from stomach flu.
But then Can Ergenekan made barfing in a workout from pushing
himself to the max a regular occurrence.
Matt
Brown came up with an innovative way to make up for lost sleep by
walking with his eyes closed which made walking into closed sliding
glass doors a regular occurrence.
Jenny Ankeny used to swim faster times than all
the guys during the year making them all look bad. (Now
there’s a feat to be proud of, making an Olympic trials
qualifier “look bad”)
Back
in 1985, they used to have a New Years party at the big pool where
they could use all the kayaks, jump off the platforms, and swing on
the rope... all at once. Bryan says that got kyboshed pretty
quick, but not before a couple of Senior National swimmers got
kyboshed themselves. Could be related? Bryan also
remembers swimming the Tri-Cities meet each year and going to the
water
park
before the meet. The whole team managed to get sun burnt bad
before the meet. They were the hottest team in the meet, but
did not swim very fast, or get out of the pool very fast, and back
slapping for a winning race was definitely out of the
question.
Pattie Shagam remembers cold being part of Ben
Davis’s legacy as they used to go out to the Oregon beach
during spring break and train in the gentler warm waters of the
Pacific Ocean. Yikes!! “I remember it being
very, very COLD, but fun!!!
=o)”. She also remembers someone was kind enough to let
30 teenage swimmers trample around their beach house for a
week.
What changed the most during the
years Ben Davis spent with the club? Ben says the population of the
area. When he first arrived in Oregon, Ben walked up and stood
on the 10 meter platform at the pool then stared out the
windows. All he could see were trees. But Intel had come
to town and Nike was growing fast drawing new people into
Washington County like a picnic draws ants. That meant more
swimmers for the club. It swelled to over 240 sanctioned
swimmers who were training in all four TPHRD pools at any hours
they could get lanes!! (So much for the Cascade Swimming
strategy.)
Ben participated in a couple of
historic events for THSC. One was the retirement of Margaret
Penn Fetz in 1995 at age 75 after 37 years of coaching with the
club. The Margret Penn Fetz Award is presented to one
Thunderbolt swimmer each year in honor of her outstanding
contribution to the club. She still follows the club’s
news in the weekly newsletter and her friends at the Beaverton
Lodge say she never stops talking about the swimmers! But she
did participate in another club historic event with Ben Davis
before she retired; the return of Brent Lang, THSC’s
homegrown Olympic Gold medal winner.
After winning a Gold Medal in the
1988 Olympics, Brent returned to visit the T-Hills club and talk
about his years with the club and his Olympic adventure. The
visit would be more memorable than he ever expected. The
entire club assembled in the spectator section of the 50 meter pool
for Brent’s presentation. He let them pass around his
medal while he talked. As each swimmer turned the medal over
to look at both sides, the thumb screw attaching the ribbon to the
medal loosened. When the medal reached the very top row, a
young swimmer reached down to lift it up by the ribbon. The
screw came out and the medal dropped! Brent and the young
swimmer watched, petrified in fear as the gold medal banged,
flipped, bounced, rolled and clanked to the bottom of the concrete
steps. After a few moments of silence, Brent retrieved the
medal and the ribbon as he started to breathe again. He says
the medal still has a big dent in the top where it hit the edge of
the first step.
Brent finished his presentation
before retreating to the safety of the pool for a relaxing
demonstration swim. Or so he thought. It started well
enough with a strong start, good streamline and smooth Olympic form
freestyle sprint down the calm 50 meter pool. He could feel
the water slipping past quickly and was at peace. Then he
reached the 25 meter mark and Coach Penn stopped him to correct his
stroke! What did the Olympian do? He stopped. He
listened. He did what Coach Penn told him to do. He finished his
swim. Why? Remember brother Eric? When Coach Penn
speaks, swimmers stop and listen. And they do what they are
told. That is how they become Olympians!
Ben Davis remembers that incident
having a stronger and longer lasting impression on the THSC
swimmers than the gold medal. After all, if a gold medal
winner had to listen to their coach, who were they to do any
different!
Great coaches and great clubs do
not just produce great swimmers. They produce great
people. And it is not always the best swimmers who become the
great people. Take Adam Kennedy for example:
Navy Cadet Swim Team
Assistant Coach: Adam
Kennedy
Adam Kennedy begins his third
season as a member of the Navy coaching staff and his fourth year
as an assistant to head Coach Bill Roberts. In addition to his
coaching duties, Kennedy also serves as the assistant director of
the Navy swimming camp. Kennedy has guided Navy’s
sprint and breaststroke groups to multiple NCAA ’B’ cut
times during each of his first two years, during which time they
also competed in national events such as the 2005 World
Championship Trials and the ’06 USA Swimming Spring
Championship.
Prior to his arrival at Navy, Kennedy was an assistant coach to
Roberts at Colgate before serving as a graduate assistant at
Ohio. He swam on the collegiate level at Davidson, earning
four letters during his career. His prep career included swimming
for Ben Davis and the Tualatin Hills Swim Club and for Sunset High
School in Portland, Ore.
Ben Davis left T-Hills in 1997 but
by no means left swimming. Ben became the Head Coach and Program Director of
the Birmingham Swim League in June 1998. He is entering his
9th year with BSL. His immediate coaching duties are with the
Senior Group but he is involved in every aspect of the
club. He even serves on the Southeastern Swimming Board of
Directors as General Chairman. He stays in touch with many of his
former T-Hills swimmers and coaches.
Section IV
The Rise To International
Standing
1998 – 2003 Paul Bergen Head
Coach
With
everything all the coaches, swimmers and parents of T-Hills had
done to take THSC swimmers out to meet the world, what was left to
do? Bring the world to THSC! At least that is what Coach
Paul Bergen declared as the new mission of THSC. And Paul
certainly knew what world class swimming was.
Fast Facts on Paul
Bergen:
- Four-time Olympic Coach (1980,1984,1988.
2004)
- Four-time World Championship Coach
(1975,1978,1982,1986)
- American Swim Coach of the Year
(1977,1978)
- Women’s University Swim Coach of the Year
(1981,1882)
- Canadian Swim Coach of the Year (1986)
- International Swimming Hall of Fame Honoree
(1998)
- Women’s Collegiate National Champions
(1981,1982 - University of Texas)
- U.S. Swimming National Champions (1978 - Nashville
Aquatic Club)
- Canadian National Champions
(1983,1984,1985,1986,1987,1988 - Etobicoke Swim Club)
- 21 World Records (8 swimmers 1970 - 2000)
- 24 American Records (8 swimmers 1970 -
1982)
- 13 Canadian Records (7 swimmers 1982 -
1988)
The
club picked up a new nick name; The Thunderbolts, a new logo and a
great new home meet in December that brought in teams with
outstanding swimmers from France, Germany, Canada and later Mexico
to compete head to head with the best of the Thunderbolts in a 25
meter short course challenge. But bringing international
swimmers to the pool for meets was only part of the plan. Paul
had international Olympic champion swimmers coming to the club to
train as well. The most famous was without question, Inge de Bruijn
who swam in the 1992, 2000 and 2004 Olympics winning gold and
setting world records along the way. She commented about
training with the Thunderbolts in a 2002 interview with Cliff
Pfenning for The Portland Tribune,
One
thing that keeps de Bruijn motivated is her training partners, and
virtually all of them are teenagers. She spends a part of most days
training with Bergen’s team, the 200-member Tualatin Hills
Thunderbolts. For her, swimming and club teams go hand in
hand.
“I’ve always swum with a club
team,” she says. “That’s how I got my start and
my nickname. My coaches used to call me ‘Inky the
Inkfish’ when I first started out. It just stuck. I’m
proud to be on their team.”
Read
the entire interview in the swimmer information section at the back
of this document.
Inky
was not the only international Olympian in the pool. Others
included Chantal Grout (NED) 100 FL, 400 FR Relay, Kaori Hamada
(JPN) 50 FR, 400 FR Relay,Igor Martchenko (RUS) 100 FL, 400 Medley Relay,Junko Onishi (JPN) 100 FL, 400
Medley Relay and Dennis Pimankov (RUS) 400 FR
Relay.
Paul had homegrown stars as well. 9 of them
made it to the Olympic trials in 2000 or 2004. One of them was
Rebekah Olsen who held Oregon state records in the 100 yard
freestyle and the 400-yard freestyle relay, held Westview high
school records in seven events including 200 freestyle, 50
freestyle, 100 freestyle, 200 freestyle, 100 butterfly, 100
backstroke, 200 individual medley was a seven-time All-American,
was ranked 17th in the U.S. in the 200-yard freestyle, and 19th in
the 100-yard freestyle, as of July 2000 and went to the 2000 U.S.
Olympic Team Trials where she competed in preliminary events of the
100-meter butterfly and the 100- and 200-meter
freestyle
Another was Trent Staley who qualified for the
Olympic Trials in 2000, went on to USC where he had a great
swimming career and qualified for the Olympic trials again in
2004. Trent has stayed with swimming out of the pool as well
and is currently the Athlete’s Vice
President of USA Swimming.
Having a head coach of Paul’s caliber not
only attracts great swimmers who want to learn more, it attracts
great coaches as well. Sean Hutchison stopped by for a couple of
years to work with Paul and the senior swimmers then went up to
Seattle to build a powerhouse of his own at the King Aquatic
Club. He has done a great job making them one of the
Thunderbolt’s top rivals. After Sean left Alex Gendron
came in from a string of head coaching positions to be an Assistant
to Head Coach Paul Bergen, and coach of the Senior 2
swimmers.
The
Age Group level saw changes as well. The last of the long time
veteran THSC coaches, Gary Leach, left the club in 1999 after 23
years of outstanding contributions to the foundation and growth of
the T-Hills family. He continues to coach as an assistant today at
the MAC and is doing an excellent job with their young swimmers.
Taking his place as Head Age Group coach at T-Hills was Linck
Bergen. Linck had built an impressive coaching resume of his
own: Head Age Group Coach, Napa Valley Swim Team, Napa, CA
1993-1996; Head Coach, Cape Swim Team, Cape Girardeau, MO
1991-1993; Head Swim Coach/Aquatic’s Director, Blairwood
Racquet Club, Louisville, KY 1990-1991; Head Age Group Coach,
Etobicoke Swim Club, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
1986-1988
Between 1999 and 2003, what may be the most
impressive group of JAG swimmers in club history was assembled.
They made those “TOP 16” t-shirts look like standard
club uniforms and swam with the motto “let no club record go
unbroken!” Not many records have escaped their onslaught as
they have typically wiped out over 100 of them a year as they aged
up from one group to the next. When developmental coach Sarah
Wald came onboard in 2003 to work with the JAG swimmers, she just
watched in awe as her young ladies won every event in the first
meet she coached. What did Coach Sarah have to
say? “This coaching thing is easy
business!”
It
was not just the JAG swimmers who were making national waves
though. Tualatin Hills Swim Club’s
15-18 girls quartet of Mary Patterson, Genna Patterson, Kara Nelson
and Anne Liggett combined for a 1:44.22. which was a
national age group record in the 200 yard medley
relay at the Northwest Section-Western Zone Age Group Sectional
Meet, March 21-23, 2003. They also set the national
age group record in the girls 15-16 400 yard medley relay
with a 3:43.81 (Kara now swims for Auburn and Anne is a coach for
the Hillsboro Heat) Caitlin Summers stepped in for Kara Nelson to
help the team grab a 3rd #1 in the nation relay title
for 2002 – 2003 of 1:37.40 in the 200 free relay. Not to
be left out, the TAG girls team of Michelle Needham, Elica
Sharifnia, Jordan King and Kathy Liggett posted their own #1 in the
nation relay in the 200 medley with a 1:52.81. That is
right. Four number one in the nation relay titles in one season!
Nine Top 16 relay times in total.
Paul spent the first part of the 2004 –
2005 season as the Head Age Group Coach while a replacement for
Linck was found then moved on to coach the Mexican National Team in
2005 then back to Montreal in 2006 to Coach at Canada’s
National Training Center. However he maintains more than a
casual interest in the continued success of THSC as his son, Linck
Bergen has taken over as head coach, moving up from Head Age Group
Coach. The December International meet now bears his name and
the Thunderbolts are not just learning how to be international
swimmers. They and their families are learning how to be
international ambassadors as they open their homes and their hearts
to some great young people from around the world. Being part of a
club like THSC is about a lot more than just great
swimming. It is great coaches, great parents and great
swimmers.
2004 – 2007 Head Coach Linck
Bergen
In his short time as head coach, Linck has had to
lead the team through triumph, tragedy and coaching transitions at
all levels. Long time Bergen friend and coaching peer, Chris
Givens was brought in to take over the senior group and assist
Linck. Native Oregonian and former All American swimmer, Ben Swinehart was lured back home from
his coaching position in Florida to take over as Head Age Group
coach in early 2004. Sarah Wald was providing a steady hand
with the JAG kids. Tri-athlete and dry-land coach Bridget
Dawson was putting the kids through their paces outside the pool.
The swimmers were continuing to perform well through all of
it. It looked like the 2004 – 2005 season would be a
great one. And it started out as promised with lots of record
breaking swims and a great International Meet in December. But
Christmas was not to be a season of joy for the team.
Chris Givens had made a major impression on the
swimmers and coaches in his short time with the team. But as
the old song says, “you don’t what you got ‘til
it’s gone”. Chris Givens passed away unexpectedly
over Christmas leaving the team in shock. But the team did not
turn away. They dealt with it head on, with compassion for the
family, with sensitivity for the coaches and a firm grip on their
own grief. Then the team moved on. Not forgetting but honoring
Coach Chris by finishing a great season with him in their hearts
and on their t-shirts.
For Linck and the board, moving on meant finding
a replacement, fast. The championship meet season was coming
on and there could be no holes in the coaching line-up. The Bergen
connection found a temporary solution in a former University of
Michigan assistant coach who was available until the end of the
season. He filled in, doing a great job with the kids and
giving the club time to find the right fit for the long
run. The right fit turned out to be Alex Steger, a Missouri
native who said “show me” the way to Oregon after
several successful coaching positions in the hot and humid
south.
For the swimmers, it meant swimming with emotion.
And that they did. Those JAG kids became TAG kids and
not only continued their winning way; they elevated it to yet
another level. Their individual efforts were TOP 16 but their
relays were ‘take no prisoners’! Check out these
results for the Women’s 11-12 Age Group.
2004/2005 Short Course:
200 Free Relay: (#4 in nation)
Abby Lindstrom, Taylor Lakey, Sarah Cruzan, Taylor
Scroggy
400
Free Relay: (#2 in nation) Taylor Lakey, Sarah Cruzan,
Taylor Scroggy, Abby Lindstrom
200
Medley Relay: (#2 in nation) Sarah Cruzan, Megan McCarroll,
Taylor Lakey, Abby Lindstrom
400
Medley Relay: (#1 in nation) Same as above
2004/2005 Long Course:
400
Free Relay: (#6 in nation) Taylor Lakey, Taylor
Scroggy, Megan McCarroll, Louise Nistler
200
Medley Relay: (#3 in nation) same as above
400
Medley Relay: (#1 in nation) same as above
The new Thunderbolt coaching team was in
place. The gears were meshing. The parents were working
hard. And the swimmers were ready for new
challenges. That combination made the 2005 – 2006 season
one of the best ever for the team in many ways.
Highlights from 2005-2006 Swimming
Season
We
had one swimmer qualify for the 2008 Olympic Trials.
We
had 6 National Qualifiers.
10
Thunderbolts Swam at Jr. Nationals.
16
OSI Records captured.
Over
112 Team Records smashed.
Won
the 11-14 OSI SC Championships and the 11 & Over LC OSI
Championships.
44
Thunderbolts with Western Senior Section Qualifying
times.
17
swimmers with Top 16 Reportable times.
2005-2006 All American High School
Swimmers:
Woman: Lindsey King, Jordan King,
Mackenzie Luick, Michelle Needham, Morgan Scroggy.
Men: Matthew
Grimes, Morgan Henderson-Kunz, Quincy Lee, Carlos Nunez, Sean
O’Keefe.
Thunderbolt Scholastic All American
Swimmers:
Alex Farrar, Victoria Hartman,
Hanna McCulley, Kelsey Pinson, Morgan Scroggy, Cody
Deacon
Great success does not mean it is time to stop
improving however. Coach Ben added another level to the age
group team by creating Team Thunder designed for 10 and under kids
ready to compete at the state level. He also established
Friday Night Thunder where the non-sanctioned Olympic way swimmers
get to learn about competition swimming against each other in a
variety of traditional and not so traditional events. It also
introduces some willing parents to the joys of operating a stop
watch; a skill they will find useful for many years to come.
The 2006 – 2007 season has been better yet!
The men won the Senior Sectionals and the team placed third in the
combined. The 11-14 age group won state and finished third in
the sectionals. Two swimmers have reached Olympic Trials
times, Morgan Scroggy and Morgon Henderson Kunz. The coaching team
has grown together with the only change being Sarah Wald going off
to nursing school. (We could use someone with medical
knowledge on the team!) But Ruth Stocks stepped in to fill the
gap with her experience as a swimmer, a parent of multiple top
swimmers and long time involvement in the club as an official and
in many other roles.
Section V
What Does The Future
Hold?
THSC 2008 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
???
What does the future hold for the
Thunderbolts? Things look strong right now. The coaching
team brings a broad diversity of coaching, swimming and life
experiences to the club yet appear to have a great chemistry with
each other, the swimmers and the parents. We have waiting
lists for every group in the club so there is no shortage of
swimmers. We have two Olympic Trials Qualifiers for 2008 so
there is no shortage of great swimming. Parents are racking up
hundreds of share hours and putting on impromptu social events with
the swimmers. But there are challenges ahead. Some are
the perpetual ones and others are new but all are a reflection of
the times we live in.
The cost of operating a 50 meter pool anywhere
north of the Mason-Dixon Line is soaring with skyrocketing energy
and maintenance costs. Tax weary district residents are voting
down bonds, rate increases and frowning at higher usage
fees. New facilities dedicated to competition swimming are
unlikely and old facilities are falling behind in repairs. The kids
are facing ever increasing pressures to raise the bar academically
to compete in a world market for top college admissions and
successful careers. Parents are seeing more and more reports
skeptical about the long term impact of younger and younger one
sport athletes. Coaches are concerned about the impact of more
and more investigations, exposures and outright admissions of use
of performance enhancing substances by top athletes sending a
message that “winning IS everything”
Will the club be able to deal with all these
challenges successfully? Yes. How will the club do
it? Rod Harman told us how 50 years ago.
