Our Tribute to Masters Swimming

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Added: Thu. Oct 22, 2009 10:15pm
Posted in: Water Sports

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We’ve turned a good bit of our front page real estate over to masters swimming for the next couple of days. If you don’t like masters swimming, don’t worry. It’s only temporary and maybe soon we’ll turn the space over to your favorite activity.  

You don’t have to be a masters swimmer to be inspired by the thousands of men and women who take part in the sport for the many social, physical and emotional benefits.

We recently attended the First Annual Rowdy Gaines Masters Classic and found swimmers from their early 20’s to their late 80’s. Every one has a great story and we wish we could tell them all. There were former Olympic champions, cancer survivors, doctors, entrepreneurs, teachers, grandmothers, great grandfathers, college students and more.

The competitors also included a 58-year-old from Growing Bolder who continues his  “comeback tour.”  I swam two individual events and two relays and although I didn’t swim as well (fast) as I wanted, I thoroughly enjoyed the competition.

The highlight was swimming on two relays with my fellow Blue Frog teammates; Rowdy Gaines, Keith Switzer, and Scot Weiss. Masters relays compete based upon total aggregate age. The total age of our relay was 198 so we competed in the 160-199 age group. (If you look closely, you can find me in the interview with Rowdy Gaines swimming on a freestyle relay and later  --- a little butterfly.)

Even though we won the free relay, I’m told that if our ages would have totaled 200, we would have set a world record. How cool is that? Rowdy doesn’t need another world record, and Keith already has a couple but Scot and I wouldn’t mind one.  One more birthday by two of our members and we’re there.

That may be the coolest thing about masters swimmers. When it comes to age, it’s a world turned upside down. Most can’t wait to “age up” because that’s where the opportunity is.

When you think about it, that’s where the opportunity is for all of us. So why fear the future? Why dread getting older? It’s all we have. Masters swimmers not only realize that, they embrace it. They work hard to make their next meet, their next year, the best ever. Many have moved beyond simply holding back time to actually turning back time. They are swimming faster at 60 than they did at 20. That’s mind-boggling. Mind-boggling cool.