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Going the distance
By NIELA 'DAKOTA' ElIASON
"Just because you're old, doesn't mean you have to be a couch potato." * * * I swam to Key West. Not really, but I swam the 200-mile distance in the North Shore swimming pool in St. Petersburg. Doing a mile a day, three or four days a week, it took me more than a year to complete the distance. I won a T-shirt. Compared with the others on my team, the Florida Maverick Masters -- I'm pretty wimpy. Jean Troy, 74, likes to compete. She took three world records this spring at the Masters World Championships in Christchurch, New Zealand. Peggy Hughes, 81, has been named one of the United States Masters Swimming (USMS) Long Distance All-Stars. She loves swimming long distances, sometimes in the Gulf of Mexico. She swims from the beach near the Hurricane Restaurant to the Don CeSar resort and back, almost 4 miles. Hughes is part of a quartet of swimmers including Florence Carr (who swam in Hollywood movies), Jean Troy and Kay Schimpf, who broke the record for local Masters in a relay race. The Mavericks are part of a national and worldwide organization of Masters swimmers. Recently, I talked with coach Paul Hutinger about swimming. Hutinger, 77, was named 2001 Florida Swimmer of the Year and was recently featured on the cover of SWIM magazine. He has a doctorate in exercise physiology from Indiana University and has taught at Western Illinois; he is a former Navy coach, and was a swimming champion with the Navy. Paul retired in 1992 and he and his wife, Margie, moved to St. Petersburg. The Mavericks team was organized in 1996. The Mavericks, one of two teams at the North Shore Pool, is unusual in that most of the team members do not live near the pool. Troy lives in Sun City Center; Don McCollough, 86, in South Dakota; Robert McDonald, 73, in Naples. McDonald took three gold medals in the world contests in Munich last year. We have team members in Indiana, Texas, Missouri and Minnesota. Others live in Sarasota, Bradenton and Clearwater. This is what you might call a "postal" swim team. They work out in their own pools and communicate by newsletter and e-mail, then get together at swim meets. Of the 62 team members, about a dozen swim at North Shore. The pool is 50 meters long and 25 yards wide. This provides 10 long lanes or 25 shorter ones. You must be at least 19 to join the Masters program. The youngest swimmer with the Mavericks is 27-year-old Matt Watkins, who draws attention for his beautiful and efficient stroke. Recently, the Hutingers sponsored the National One-Hour Postal Swim. This included tabulating results and mailing packages to competitors all over the country and other nations, including Japan and Australia. There were 2,005 entries. Many team members helped with this ambitious project. The entrants swam a collective 4,200 miles. Maverick Art Holden logged 1,600 yards. Not bad for a 91-year-old. The Mavericks' Web site is www.maverickswim.org.
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