Catching up with Old Friends

I had dinner with Jeff "the Ref" Dean last night. What a good time!

It had been years since I'd seen the guy; we estimated that it was somewhere between 5 and 7. We had shared some interesting times in our younger days, and that connection will always be there, even with such gaps between contact.

Jeff helped to start my swim coaching career. It was 1981, and I had just moved to Denver from Wichita, Kansas. I joined the local YMCA, and learned that they had a Masters Swim Team there. It was a small group -- we only got two lanes of the pool for our workouts -- but Jeff and I immediately became friends. We were about the same speed; I had an advantage in the longer events and he was better at the short stuff, but we could share a lane and push each other...so that's what we did.

Our coach, Dawn, was the Aquatics Director for the Y. She had been a pretty good competitive swimmer and designed decent workouts, though her interaction with us was minimal. She wasn't around long, though -- there were rumors that she and her husband had performed some "questionable" bookkeeping with YMCA funds and were let go. She said she just found a better job; I never knew which version was true, but the bottom line was that we suddenly had no swim coach.

They hired a college girl to replace Dawn. I think her name was Julie, and I think she might've turned out OK as a coach, except that she became infatuated with a swimmer named Bob, and started making out with him during practice. It was distracting.

Did I say "distracting"? I meant disgusting. And distracting, too I guess -- as well as highly inappropriate. Anyway, she didn't last long, and a new coach replaced her.

His name was Randy, and he was a marathon runner, and according to the YMCA staff, a darned good one. Couldn't swim a stroke, but the top thinkers at the YMCA figured that he knew about phisiology, training, and racing, so he could adapt his knowledge to aquatics without missing a beat.

Uh... they were wrong.

Before the season, Randy asked each of us what our goals were for the short-course yards season. I told him I wanted to break a minute in the 100 fly, which was a challenging but doable goal for me. He just stared at me with his mouth open. "That's impossible!", he snorted. "That's close to the World Record. You can't do that!"

His ignorance of swim times aside, I didn't want a coach who told me what I could NOT do. I wanted a coach who would try to figure out a way to go after a goal, impossible or not. Randy was not that guy.

And apparently, he didn't enjoy the team any more than we enjoyed his attempts to re-tool his track workouts for the pool. He didn't last long, either.

The next guy they brought in was a hockey player. A freakin' hockey player! And he was afraid of the water, too -- he'd stand back about 20 feet from the edge and shout. This dude had NO IDEA what he was doing. At that point, Jeff and I decided that we had to do something about it.

We went to the YMCA staff and said "Look, if you want a successful Masters Swim Team, you can't bring in these goomers who don't know the difference between Mary T. Meagher and a Puccini opera, regardless of their puck-handling skills."

"Hey, it's tough to find experienced swim coaches when you don't look very hard and don't want to pay them anything," they replied. Jeff and I, wanting to avoid getting a backgammon player or a deep-sea fisherman as our next coach, replied in unison, "We'll do it!" And then in a spasm of ill-considered generosity, we added, "...for FREE!"

And thus began our coaching careers. I don't know the details of the wealth of experience Jeff had, other than knowing that he swam for the Colorado swimming icon, Steve Hadley. As for me, I had learned from such authorities as Doug Sidles and the incomparable Bill Spahn, and had swum with National Record Holders and Olympians. In addition to spending a good chunk of our lives in the water, both Jeff and I also enjoyed analyzing the elements of our sport, and were willing to do some additional research to keep up with the latest trends, etc. Plus, we both liked to yell at people. It seemed to be a good fit.

We alternated coaching days, and began to build a team. We had some excellent years at the Y, and perhaps I'll share stories from those days in future posts. Jeff moved on to coach other teams, including the DU Masters for a while, and became a fixture on pool decks across the state as a certified swimming official...hence the nickname "Jeff the Ref". And in addition to those accomplishments, he also competed in Iron Man-distance triathlons, distance cycling races, and even completed the insanely grueling Leadville Trail 100 run.

I could go on and on about training with Jeff, racing against him, and cringing through stories of his various crashes, spills, and relationship disasters -- despite all his accomplishments, the man has not led an easy life. But I truly like and admire the guy, and greatly enjoyed catching up with him again.

My advice for you this day, then, is this: Think about good friends you haven't seen for a while, and give 'em a call. You'll have a great day!