A PANDEMIC PERSPECTIVE FROM MASTERS SWIMMING Masters swimmers maintain a connection to the sport they love as well as to their team and community. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, that connection has been missing the past year, but they are ready to face the challenges that lie ahead. BY DAN D'ADDONA | PHOTOS BY U.S. MASTERS SWIMMING
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here are more than 65,000 Masters swimmers in the United States representing nearly 1,500 swimming teams across the country, and as with so many other organizations, meets have been postponed multiple times and even canceled altogether. Swimmers around the country have been missing out on competing at the local and national level. Perhaps even more important to them, they are missing out on what happens out of the water at these local and national meets: camaraderie. Camaraderie is something very unique to Masters. Swimmers are there to compete and keep up with one of their passions. But they are doing this with people in their own age groups. Get to talking, and the similarities start to grow.
THE SOCIAL ASPECT “A lot of us just do it for the social aspect. That is the one time we see each other—at meets,” said Nadine Day, former president of U.S. Masters Swimming and a current Masters swimmer at Indy Aquatics. “That is our commonality, the swimming part. We meet people and their families. My daughter was basically born on the pool deck. She went to her first meet with me when she was a month old! “There is a lot of social aspect in Masters swimming. I am somewhat competitive in my age group, but that is not my focus. It is the social aspect and growing the sport. That is one of the main reasons why I swim. We have missed that.” For months during the pandemic, pools were closed around the country—and the world—as COVID-19 spread around the globe in waves. It has kept practices on hold and also traveling to meets, which, of course, means no competition and no connection with fellow swimmers around the country. “It has been tough. I am used to traveling every month. Zoom helps. It has helped us stay in touch with each other,” Day said. “When I travel internationally, I see my friends that I only see at 12
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Worlds every year or every other year, and that has been tough, too.” PROMOTING THE SPORT With nearly an entire year of Masters swimming lost, it is now a year of promoting the sport lost. That is one of the biggest challenges of Masters swimming, especially because of its name, which can make joining seem intimidating. “The name is the biggest issue. It is actually adult swimming. It is not ‘Masters’ because you are great swimmers. We have had Olympians, but the majority of our people are fitness swimmers,” Day said. “We also have the crossbreed of the triathlon athletes, which has become big. A lot of the people I have coached have been runners who are swimming to get fit. They were surprised they got more conditioning out of swimming. It was a challenge for them, and people like challenges such as that.” Day said after she was a college swimmer at Northwestern, she didn’t even know Masters swimming existed. She actually joined to help one of the high school swimmers she was coaching. “I was coaching high school, and one of my swimmers was injured. I was a PT at the time as well. She fractured her pelvis and her ribs in a car accident. Her goal was to get back and swim her senior year. She wanted me to swim with her and get back into it, too. I was injured in college as a freshman and was able to come back and swim a bit my senior year. So I swam Masters and had my first meet in Evanston,” Day said. “I just started getting involved more and volunteering more.” A LIFE-CHANGING ACTIVITY Laurie Hug got into Masters swimming after college, and it has been life-changing. “I graduated from University of Maryland in 1987 and failed to get the Olympic Trials cut that summer, so I retired (from the sport), started working, and I put on weight. I got back into lap swimming at the local YMCA about a year later, but I had no idea that there
