The Records
As a father I always supported my kids in their activities---piano, scouts, baseball, skiing, basketball, triathlon, soccer, swimming, and so on. I was a scout leader and a swim official for years. I didn’t live through them, but for sure I did some living for them.
Both of my kids---Maggie and Cary---excelled at competitive swimming. Maggie competed throughout grade school, high school and university, becoming the Atlantic Universities (AUS) champion in backstroke events while swimming for Dalhousie University in Halifax. She raced at the national age group level, competing across Canada starting at age 14, and held individual records in Newfoundland and Labrador in breaststroke events, and as part of province-wide relay teams. She also competed internationally at the Age Group Championships in Ireland and at the National Championships in Bermuda, where she won three medals. It was an integral part of her life and helped build character, responsibility and an understanding of commitment. It instilled time management skills in her. She learned to win with grace and lose with dignity, and not to be a quitter at anything. To this day she swims regularly and is an age group coach with a city-based team in Kingston, Ontario, and so is putting something back into the sport that gave her so much.
Cary, too, was a fine swimmer and spent his grade school and high school years with a focus on competitive swimming and, increasingly, basketball when, at about the junior high school level, that “tribal gene” kicked in as it does for most kids, particularly boys, and it became more fun to play a team sport with your buddies than to contend with the more or less isolated activity of an individual sport like competitive swimming.
Few sports demand the kind of commitment that competitive swimming does. We humans don’t really belong in the water so achieving the fitness level required to compete successfully and maintain that level of fitness means that you must train for many hours a week in the pool, usually most mornings and afternoons---that would involve a 6:00 to 7:00 AM start for an hour or more, then a 4:00 to 4:30 PM start that lasted until 7:00 PM on most days of the week. You also need to add dry land training as well, and you must watch what you eat. Junk food doesn’t produce champions in the pool.
When Cary was in kindergarten he repeatedly contracted ear infections. As a result he was given so many courses of antibiotics he began having digestive problems and spent a year or more missing lots of school and awake most nights with stomach aches, vomiting and crying. As a result his foray into swimming was interrupted and at an end of year end-of-the-year swim club banquet when he was seven years old he didn’t want to sit with his teammates, and instead sat with his mom and myself. At one point during the banquet small keepsake medals were handed out to each team member. My heart was breaking to think he would be missed when one of the junior coaches appeared out of nowhere and handed him a medal. Beaming with pride, he left our table to go sit with his teammates.
After that, as his health began to improve, he started attending swim practice on a regular basis again. His first race, a 25 meter freestyle in Stephenville, Newfoundland, saw him make it three quarters of the way down the pool before he grabbed the wall and burst into tears. At times like that you really hurt for your child. Only a parent knows that feeling.
However, within two years he was competing with increasing success against all swimmers his age and many who were years older. At the Double A championships in Carbonear, Newfoundland he won five gold medals as a nine year old and was awarded the Top Achiever trophy in the male ten-and-under category.
As a ten year old he went undefeated all season and nearly broke the 400 meter IM age group record for the province at the penultimate meet before the Short Course Championships were to take place in March in Gander. At the time the Meet Referee walked over to me, who was on deck with him in my role as Chief Timer, and said “He’ll get that in Gander.”
Our team, the West Side Heat, from Corner Brook, attended those Championships with a large contingent of swimmers, parent chaperones and coaches. As they had done for over a year and would continue to do for three more years, our swimmers were awarded more top three finishes per swimmer and more “best times per swimmer” than any other team in the province, largely due to a charismatic young coach named Dion who appeared out of nowhere one day at the club president’s house to answer an ad looking for a swim coach to helm Newfoundland’s newest swim club.
Cary did break the record for the 400 IM at the Championships in Gander. He broke it by 34 seconds. On the same weekend he broke the record for the 100 meter backstroke twice, and the record for the 200 meter backstroke twice. Most people in the swimming community believed that the backstroke records he smashed would stand for many years, and no one thought a ten year old could go as fast as he did in the 400 IM. That year he was given a national and international ranking for those achievements. The date was March 10th, 2002.
In the hotel after the meet was over some of the swimmers were watching basketball on TV with their dads in one of the parent’s rooms. I was sitting next to Cary, trying to figure out what to say to him about his achievement as he stared intently at the screen. Finally I got it out.
“Mom and Dad are really proud of you, Cary. Congratulations.”
He turned to me and said “Thanks, Dad”, then turned back to watch the game.
A few seconds later he turned towards me again and said with honesty in his voice, but also with humility, “You know Dad, I didn’t break those records for you, or for Mom, and I didn’t break them for Dion. I broke them for me.”
Those records stood for 18 years.
© Kent Jones 2016
As a father I always supported my kids in their activities---piano, scouts, baseball, skiing, basketball, triathlon, soccer, swimming, and so on. I was a scout leader and a swim official for years. I didn’t live through them, but for sure I did some living for them.
Both of my kids---Maggie and Cary---excelled at competitive swimming. Maggie competed throughout grade school, high school and university, becoming the Atlantic Universities (AUS) champion in backstroke events while swimming for Dalhousie University in Halifax. She raced at the national age group level, competing across Canada starting at age 14, and held individual records in Newfoundland and Labrador in breaststroke events, and as part of province-wide relay teams. She also competed internationally at the Age Group Championships in Ireland and at the National Championships in Bermuda, where she won three medals. It was an integral part of her life and helped build character, responsibility and an understanding of commitment. It instilled time management skills in her. She learned to win with grace and lose with dignity, and not to be a quitter at anything. To this day she swims regularly and is an age group coach with a city-based team in Kingston, Ontario, and so is putting something back into the sport that gave her so much.
Cary, too, was a fine swimmer and spent his grade school and high school years with a focus on competitive swimming and, increasingly, basketball when, at about the junior high school level, that “tribal gene” kicked in as it does for most kids, particularly boys, and it became more fun to play a team sport with your buddies than to contend with the more or less isolated activity of an individual sport like competitive swimming.
Few sports demand the kind of commitment that competitive swimming does. We humans don’t really belong in the water so achieving the fitness level required to compete successfully and maintain that level of fitness means that you must train for many hours a week in the pool, usually most mornings and afternoons---that would involve a 6:00 to 7:00 AM start for an hour or more, then a 4:00 to 4:30 PM start that lasted until 7:00 PM on most days of the week. You also need to add dry land training as well, and you must watch what you eat. Junk food doesn’t produce champions in the pool.
When Cary was in kindergarten he repeatedly contracted ear infections. As a result he was given so many courses of antibiotics he began having digestive problems and spent a year or more missing lots of school and awake most nights with stomach aches, vomiting and crying. As a result his foray into swimming was interrupted and at an end of year end-of-the-year swim club banquet when he was seven years old he didn’t want to sit with his teammates, and instead sat with his mom and myself. At one point during the banquet small keepsake medals were handed out to each team member. My heart was breaking to think he would be missed when one of the junior coaches appeared out of nowhere and handed him a medal. Beaming with pride, he left our table to go sit with his teammates.
After that, as his health began to improve, he started attending swim practice on a regular basis again. His first race, a 25 meter freestyle in Stephenville, Newfoundland, saw him make it three quarters of the way down the pool before he grabbed the wall and burst into tears. At times like that you really hurt for your child. Only a parent knows that feeling.
However, within two years he was competing with increasing success against all swimmers his age and many who were years older. At the Double A championships in Carbonear, Newfoundland he won five gold medals as a nine year old and was awarded the Top Achiever trophy in the male ten-and-under category.
As a ten year old he went undefeated all season and nearly broke the 400 meter IM age group record for the province at the penultimate meet before the Short Course Championships were to take place in March in Gander. At the time the Meet Referee walked over to me, who was on deck with him in my role as Chief Timer, and said “He’ll get that in Gander.”
Our team, the West Side Heat, from Corner Brook, attended those Championships with a large contingent of swimmers, parent chaperones and coaches. As they had done for over a year and would continue to do for three more years, our swimmers were awarded more top three finishes per swimmer and more “best times per swimmer” than any other team in the province, largely due to a charismatic young coach named Dion who appeared out of nowhere one day at the club president’s house to answer an ad looking for a swim coach to helm Newfoundland’s newest swim club.
Cary did break the record for the 400 IM at the Championships in Gander. He broke it by 34 seconds. On the same weekend he broke the record for the 100 meter backstroke twice, and the record for the 200 meter backstroke twice. Most people in the swimming community believed that the backstroke records he smashed would stand for many years, and no one thought a ten year old could go as fast as he did in the 400 IM. That year he was given a national and international ranking for those achievements. The date was March 10th, 2002.
In the hotel after the meet was over some of the swimmers were watching basketball on TV with their dads in one of the parent’s rooms. I was sitting next to Cary, trying to figure out what to say to him about his achievement as he stared intently at the screen. Finally I got it out.
“Mom and Dad are really proud of you, Cary. Congratulations.”
He turned to me and said “Thanks, Dad”, then turned back to watch the game.
A few seconds later he turned towards me again and said with honesty in his voice, but also with humility, “You know Dad, I didn’t break those records for you, or for Mom, and I didn’t break them for Dion. I broke them for me.”
Those records stood for 18 years.
© Kent Jones 2016