Pioneers in the Pool
9/7/2010 12:00:00 AM | General
The Kent State swimming and diving program disbanded after
the 1987-88 academic year, but the squad's impact on the
growth of women's intercollegiate athletics lives on. As part
of the University's Centennial Celebration, the Department of
Intercollegiate Athletics is Celebrating A Century of Kent State
Women's Athletics Homecoming Weekend, Oct. 8-10. This feature
article is the second in a series of three highlighting the teams
and student-athletes that built a historic foundation for the
current women's Intercollegiate Athletics program to stand
proudly upon. Click here for more information regarding the celebration of
Kent State women's athletics.
The only reminders of the Kent State swimming & diving
programs that remain are in university's historical archives
and in the memories of those who participated. When one examines
the history of the KSU women's swimming & diving squad,
though, it's clear that the trail blazing and achievements
performed by those young women and the folks associated with it
helped clear a path for today's women's programs.
The Kent State intercollegiate swimming and diving program was
actually spawned by the Sharks Club, which was an Amateur Athletic
Union (AAU) organization formed in 1949 that competed in
synchronized swimming.
“The Sharks Club put on one big show every spring,”
explained Dolores “Del” Peters Wilson,
who originally came to Kent State as the faculty advisor for the
Sharks. “We went into competition and hosted a synchronized
swimming symposium and had nationally recognized speakers come from
different schools. We went to a bunch of schools for competition. A
group called the Aquatic Arts then came along, and I compare that
from going to ballet to modern dance in the pool. In Aquatic Arts,
you had to do certain stunts or have a certain routine. Aquatic
Arts eventually took over the operation of the Sharks”
Wilson spearheaded the movement to bring a swimming & diving
program under the umbrella of the athletic department in 1963 and
served as coach from '63-68.
“We just picked up the ball and ran with it,”
recalled Wilson. “We went to Carl Erickson, who at that time
was the director of the division of health and physical education
and athletics and talked to him about it, and he told us to go
ahead with the program.”
When universities and colleges add new athletic programs today,
years of planning and recruiting often precede the launch of the
sport. Back in 1963, though, Wilson, the student-athletes and Kent
State simply built the program as it went along.
“The first team we had was in 1963, and we had probably 14
or 15 girls, most of which came from the Sharks Club and were
physical education majors,” said Wison. “There were no
scholarships, uniforms or expense money. As far as the coaches
getting paid, that didn't happen at all. It was just a group
of girls looking for an opportunity to compete.”
Wilson didn't really have the opportunity to recruit during
the squad's first year of operation, so the team simply
tapped into the nearest resources to find talent, particularly on
the diving side where Rudy Bachna's gymnasts offered their
talents.
“They could jump off the springboards and that kind of
stuff, so we just put them on the diving board and let them
go,” said Wilson. “They're pretty good athletes
anyway, so it was just a matter of them making the transition from
land-to-land to land-to-water.”
The Golden Flashes also took advantage of the available resources
on campus for the day-to-day operation of the program.
“We were able to use the Sharks Club's suits, which
were nylon suits,” remembered Wilson. “We were
fortunate to have Coach Bill Hoover, who was head of the
men's team. He would let us use the men's warm-up
jackets and pants when we went to away meets. We'd walk in
the pool area with those warm-ups on and look like a million
dollars because none of those other schools at that time had that
luxury.”
Although the squad hosted home meets at Memorial Gym, the swimming
& diving team didn't have the luxury of an Olympic-size
practice pool, sometimes making the necessary preparation for meets
a challenge.
“When we started the swimming team, we swam at Wills Pool.
It was located in the basement of Wills Gym and was about 20 yards
long and maybe four lanes wide,” explained Wilson.
“There were no starting blocks, so the poor backstrokers had
to get a partner to stand on the pool deck and grab their ankles
and then the backstrokers would take off.”
The swimming & diving program weathered its first season of
competition and was poised to make a splash in its second year
thanks to some strong recruiting.
“A lot of the colleges we competed against, like Michigan,
for example, they got most of their swimmers from the Ann Arbor
Swim Club,” said Wilson. “Of course, we didn't
have anything like that at the start. The second year, though, once
the program got underway and the students found out that we had a
program, we got kids from the Cleveland Swim Club and a lot of
out-of-state AAU programs. The second year, we took off like
bandits.”
Nearly 40 swimmers and divers came out for the team in 1964, and
the program began to reap the benefits. The squad made a statement
that it was a team to be reckoned with after an upset performance
on the road against a state rival.
“Bowling Green had a great and well-established program by
that time. They were sure they were going to knock off poor-old
Kent State. Our girls decided it wasn't going to be that way,
and we won that meet convincingly,” stated Wilson.
“Interestingly enough, that meet was held the same weekend
that President Kennedy was shot. At that time, all the collegiate
events in the state of Ohio were put on hold until the
powers-that-be decided the events should go on as
scheduled.”
The highlight of '64 was a second-place showing against
colleges and universities from around the country in the
Women's Intercollegiate Meet at Michigan. The success
continued through the years, including the 1967-68 squad completing
its second undefeated season in a row with 18 victories courtesy of
the performances of Grace Waldie, Muriel
Foster, Janis Smith and Jen
Haltunnen.
“It was a wonderful experience and something to be proud of,
giving those women an opportunity to do something they loved and
getting an education in return,” concluded Wilson.
Though the program is no more, its efforts as pioneers continue to
reverberate throughout the Kent State athletic program to this
day.
