Elkhart, IN

Last night as I listened to President Obama speak, the more he talked about Elkhart, IN, the more I day dreamed about my college swimming days. You see, one of my teammates at Miami was from Elkhart. Tracy was a distance swimmer. She was small, maybe 5’5’’ and all of 110 pounds soaking wet. And that girl could swim forever. I remember one day when we were leaving the weight room, she was walking with her arms way out wide, like she was some big hulking guy and I asked her what was wrong with her arms. She looked at me funny, and I said why are you walking like that. She just looked at me and said I always walk like this, my arm and shoulder muscles are so big and pumped up, they just go this way. She was a funny, 110 pound hulk. Tracy and I also shared an apartment one summer, went to summer school, and trained together, mostly running, little swimming. One day standing on our little step, she leaned her hands up against the storm door to stretch her legs, and crash – her hands went straight through the glass, sliced up her arms, and I was on the phone calling 911 for an ambulance, as neither of us had a car. She and I also called 97x (the local radio station) on a daily basis to answer trivia and other contests to win casettes (yep, we are old!), fried chicken from Krogers, and other assorted goodies. The radio station eventually tried to put a stop to us winning (there weren’t a lot of people in Oxford in summer to even play, so we won all the time), so we just started using names of other girls on the swim team, and kept on winning!

As Obama kept talking, my mind kept wandering. Jo was a little 17 year old girl who joined our team from way far away down under. She showed up the day after Christmas my sophomore year , and headed down to Florida for Christmas training with us. The first workout, coach put her and I in the same lane. I knew she was a great IM’er, and I had her lead the set of 400 IM’s. Well, in Australia they swim left to right, opposite of the direction we swim. And on the first 400, she pushed off back stroke as I was coming in fly, and she pushed off straight into me. We crashed hard, stood up, almost crying, and I’m sure she thought I was just going to bite her head off. I didn’t. I watched her later show up at the beach in a teeny tiny bikini, eating chocolate like she had never eaten chocolate in her life before. She grew up fast in America, and I think she enjoyed her experience to the fullest. Oh yeah, Jo spent Christmas with me the next year before another FL training trip. For 3 days she and I would go to McDOnalds and eat, and soak our hair and swimsuits in the sink in the bathroom instead of going to the pool to swim - we were such cheaters when we had no supervision!

I can remember freshman swimmer initiation (ok, let’s be honest and call it hazing!). The first week of class, we all show up to the pool, are told to put on swim suit, cap, goggles, and running shoes. We are split into teams, given a list of items we have to run around town searching for – into the library, restaurants in town, the presidents house. It was most embarrassing! But a memory that still brings a smile.

I remember Barb, who was a senior when I was a freshman, and I sharing a lane a lot. We were both backstrokers. She swam at Cincinnati Marlins too, and so I swam with her 4 years prior in high school. One summer at a meet at the U of Chicago pool, Barb dove into lane 8 for the 400im long course, and the strap on her suit broke. And she kept swimming! She was a tough cookie, nothing stopped her. Betsy was the tall skinny girl on the team, but she had to sleep with a pillow between her legs because she couldn’t stand the fat on her legs touching. I think I heard the ET has a relative that ended up winning one of the Survivor episodes.

Jen and Lynn, 2 years ahead of me, were tough, and funny, and I have reconnected with them through Facebook, and that has been so fun. And its such a small world, Jen used to work with a friend of mine here in Bloomington, when they both lived in Kansas City working at the NCAA. It really is a small world.

Well, just a little college swimming reminiscing… some of those things I hadn’t remembered, but Obama brought the memories flooding back – thanks Barack!