Master strokes

Underwater, anything is possible. Just ask the members of the Salvation Army Kroc Center masters swim club. For two of the oldest members, water is life.

“I am water,” said Lorna Henry, 74, while taking a break from the 5 a.m. practice last week. “That’s who I am.”

Victoria Dickinson, 69, agreed. “Oh that’s me too.”

The women are former teenage swim champs whose careers ended because there was no Title IX in the 1950s that required women’s college sports. Henry was raised in Portland and Dickinson in Texas. Dickinson coached the University of New Mexico swim team. Both hadn’t swum in a meet for years, even decades. Yet both were “nagged” into joining the masters team about a year ago and into competition because rumor had it they were good, fierce swimmers.

Today both women are among the country’s top masters swimmers – they both lead the nation in four different events in their age groups – will compete in the U.S. Masters Swimming Spring National Championships in April in San Antonio, along with four other teammates from the Coeur d’Alene area. The other members are in their 50s and one is 23.

North Idaho has a strong masters club, thanks to the Kroc’s competition-size pool and coach Mike Hamm, who works to make the swimmers a family, not just a fitness group. His efforts were evident as swimmers attempted to leave the pool to start their post-workout mornings. He lured them to the coffee bar with hot drinks and quick chats about the previous weekend meet.

“By the way,” Hamm called to Dickinson. “You set four new records and a zone record.”

He then went on chatting with other members gathered around the fireplace.

Coffee klatch is common on Friday mornings after the workout. The masters have pancake feeds and Christmas parties. Many of them swim the local lakes in the summer, often to the Coeur d’Alene Resort Golf Course’s floating green where they dive for submerged golf balls. To the 58-year-old Hamm, masters swim club is really more about friendships and camaraderie than actual swimming. That’s perhaps why so many people are willing to swim at 5 a.m. and smile about it.

“The team is cohesive,” Hamm said. “You have a village of people who love you and love each other.”

Masters is somewhat a misnomer. It’s a swim fitness group for adults 18 and older and has no ability requirements. Anybody can compete at nationals or local and regional meets, but Hamm said many of his swimmers would qualify if it were required. Less than 20 percent of the team competes.

Swimming is considered a lifelong sport, largely because water eliminates gravity and strain on joints. It also takes a lifetime to master.

Hamm, who runs a year-round swim school at his Fort Grounds home in Coeur d’Alene, said the bell curve for masters starts about age 35 and then tapers off at 60. Yet he said many people swim forever, noting one of his favorite swimmers is a 93-year-old woman from Montana, who he’s taken to nationals three times. The woman and two friends in their 80s competed at the recent weekend meet, and “whooped ass,” Hamm said.

Attendance on this particular Monday practice was low, about half of normal even though most lanes of the pool had three or four swimmers of various ages, abilities and body types. Hamm said many of the swimmers stayed home to rest after the weekend meet because they were “really beat up.” Yet, as a coach, he said they should all be in the pool swimming, stretching, healing.

About an hour into practice, Hamm told the swimmers to use a kickboard and swim side-by-side.

“Spend some social time together,” he yelled. “Love each other.”

Henry swam in the end lane by herself, slow and methodical. Stopping at the end occasionally to rub her shoulders.

“I’m sore today,” she said, climbing from the pool and joking that she can’t see and can’t hear but that she can still swim. “I came today to loosen up.”

She said swimming styles have changed immensely since the 1950s when she competed. The strokes are more efficient. As a teenager, nobody swam with goggles or swim caps. She laughed as she remembered her coach sitting the kids on the diving board and dropping castor oil into their eyes to combat the redness and soreness. If a kid happened to have their mouth open, the coach would squirt some of the thick soap-tasting liquid in their mouth.

Henry cares for her blind husband and said masters swimming is her social life. She has few friends outside the pool.

Dickinson also enjoys the camaraderie. She believes in water so much that she works as an aquatic therapist, doing water massages in a 16-foot pool spa in her Coeur d’Alene home. The water allows the body to become buoyant and the joints to decompress so stretching and range of motion increase. It also helps people with chronic pain get relief, she said.

Dickinson works on several of her teammates, including Henry.

“Being an older swimmer, you have to use common sense about your body,” Dickinson said. “If you over-train, it will set you back.”