Summer of 1978

The summer of 1978 was our family's first summer living in Moorestown, New Jersey, a charming Quaker town just outside of Philadelphia. We moved there six months earlier and were still getting settled. In the summer, I could be found in a swimming pool no matter where I was. Moorestown had a summer swim club with a great swim team, Sunnybrook Swim Club. I could get there easily riding a bicycle. The problem was, Sunnybrook had a waiting list, and Mom was interested in a pool and tennis club. That's how I ended up on the Riverton Country Club Swimming & Diving Team in the summer of 1978. The first day I went to the pool, I knew one or two kids from school, but they weren't really my friends. We had tryouts, and each of us had to swim a 50 meter freestyle, butterfly, backstroke and breaststroke. The previous summer, before we moved, I swam for the Elm-Tre Swim Club in West Caldwell, New Jersey. One year later I showed up at the Riverton Country Club tryouts as a six-foot-tall 12-year-old who hadn't done any year-round swimming, only summer swimming. Coach Jack thought I was a 14 or 15-year-old, tall but behind the curve in competitive swimming. But I was just 12 and he was shocked by that. He told me he would make me into a swimmer that summer, and he did.

Our team looks a little rag-tag in the photo, but that summer we managed to have one of the best teams in the club's history. We took second in the B Division of the Tri-County Swimming Pool Association, a 36-team league covering southern New Jersey, Burlington, Camden and Gloucester Counties. The dual meet season involved head-to-head team battles with the other five teams in our six-team division, plus a few unofficial meets against local teams outside our division. In addition, there was a relay carnival, the Burlington and Tri-County Championships, and swimmer had to achieve qualifying times to go to the championships. I got my cuts early in the season and continued to improve, about 5 seconds per 50 in each of my two individual events, backstroke and breaststroke. Our team finished sixth at the Tri-County Championships that summer, our best finish in years and a level the club has not reached since then. I still have all the ribbons and medals, and I remember every meet and all of the races. I still remember the disqualification in the backstroke at the Whitman Square dual meet. It was for doing a bad turn. I also remember my only individual loss all season, in the breaststroke against David Zelaney of Riverdel. Dave was later a teammate, briefly, and sadly he passed away in 2013 at age 47. I remember him from that one red ribbon. Having the old awards is like having a document of the whole season, and some of the awards have times, dates and other information. I have no idea what to do with the collection. It's not on display, and it has no value other than the obvious sentimental value. It's fun to pull out the old awards from time to time, test my memory, and remember the names and faces from the summer of 1978.