Combine swimming and diversity and two simple truths emerge: the sport isn't diverse, and there are no quick fixes.

by Tom Slear, Splash Magazine Special Correspondent, January-February, 2002

It was time to move on and Michael Norment knew it. The coach who had taught him how to swim, and the club that had nurtured him through the formative years of age-group swimming, didn't have the horsepower to boost him to the next level. Norment concluded as much when he mentioned an aggressive goal in the 100y breaststroke, only to have the coach temper his enthusiasm with a doubtful look.

Norment knew the split from his club wouldn't be easy. There would be doubts and possibly recriminations, as there had been for the hundreds of other talented swimmers over the years who had switched teams to jumpstart their careers. Norment's move, however, would be considerably more problematic. He was a rarity among competitive swimmers:  fast and African-American. He had grown up in an all-black club in Long Island, N.Y. He didn't need a demographic study to tell him that the makeup of American swimming resembled a bowl of rice sprinkled with a few specks of pepper. At what other club would he feel comfortable?

Overt racism didn't concern him. He had experienced only one disconcerting incident in his nine years of swimming, and that was handled promptly and firmly by meet officials. Rather, Norment worried about a subtle form of discrimination that had little to do with race and much to do with a lily-white sport unaccustomed to dealing with minorities. When Norment won races in remarkably fast times, spectators typically paused before cheering, taking a moment to absorb what they had just witnessed.

"You can understand it," says Norment, choosing his words carefully, lest he create the mistaken impression that the lasting memories of his competitive swimming career, which included a fifth-place finish in the 100m breaststroke at the 1999 Pan Pacific Championships, were anything but positive. "It's a big change: an African-American swimmer, a minority, someone they are not used to seeing swim fast and winning races. And when confronted with change, most people are frightened because it shakes their foundation.”

Norment didn't want to frighten any one. He only wanted to swim faster. His goals were national championships and international competitions, not experiments in athletic diversity.

Where would he go?

HOW DIVERSE AND WHY

USA Swimming membership statistics unequivocally point to a sport that is overwhelmingly Caucasian. Asians comprise roughly four percent; African-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans each less than two percent. On ethnic terms, certainly, diversity is lacking.

Diversity, however, is a lot like justice, patriotism, or morality. Everyone knows what it is, but no two people agree. Who's to say ethnicity is the only yardstick? What about gender diversity, where swimming has done quite well? Some would say it has overcompensated. Women now outnumber men almost two to one.

There's also diversity of nationalities. For decades the United States has served as swimming's Mecca, every year attracting hundreds of swimming immigrants.

"We don't care where you come from," says Gregg Troy, the men's swimming coach at the University of Florida. "If you want to swim fast, you can train in America."

Before taking the job at Florida, Troy coached the club and high school teams at Bolles for 20 years. He trained swimmers with a variety of ethnic backgrounds from more than a dozen countries, swimmers such as Suriname's Anthony Nesty, the first black swimmer to win an Olympic gold medal (1988, 100m butterfly). From Troy's perspective, American swimming is plenty diverse.

Then there's the matter of diversity's purpose. Here again, no two people seem to agree. For a society to thrive in the long-term, its subsets must interact on a meaningful level, but how does that laudable goal apply to competitive swimming, where performance is paramount and backgrounds are irrelevant?

"We need to look at what the real concern is," says Murray Stephens, the founder of North Baltimore Aquatic Club and a 1996 Olympic coach. "Are we trying to get the numbers right so that (people) feel better, or are we really trying to bring more talented athletes into swimming?”

Both, at least according to Chuck Wielgus, the executive director of USA Swimming. He is convinced that any organization absent an appropriate number of minorities will come under increased scrutiny. It's a sign of the times. Stay white and there surely will be legal, political, and economic pressures to change.

"You can see what's coming," Wielgus says. "We will at some point be held accountable by the U.S. Olympic Committee to a statistical analysis of how well we are doing, from the athlete population, to the staff at USA Swimming, to the board of directors. Beyond that, quite frankly, I don't think we want to be labeled as a sport that's just for rich white kids. We have to be concerned with who doesn't have access to swimming."

A nod to political correctness, no doubt, yet Wielgus sees a silver lining. Swimming has no measurable currency among the economically disadvantaged within the inner cities, the same segment that provides a rich talent pool for sports such as basketball and football. If swimming could capture a mere slice of that market, Wielgus reasons, the boon would be substantial. But the hurdles are high, almost insurmountable. A Michael Jordan in a Speedo is far over the horizon.

"There is no quick fix," Wielgus concedes. "The problems are political and expensive. They are huge."

MORE ECONOMIC THAN ETHNIC

The Buffalo Schools Swim Racers demonstrate just how huge. The genesis of the program came one day six years ago when the principal of an elementary school in Buffalo invited Gary Stillman to her office for a talk.

“Get some after-school programs started," she pleaded. “Something…anything.”

The makeup of the student body was what you would expect at an inner-city school:  mostly black and Hispanic and desperately poor.

“Do you have a swimming pool?” Stillman asked.

“Well, yes, but...”

Stillman knew the bias. Inner-city kids don’t swim; they play basketball. Stillman, who is white, didn’t buy it. He had a learning and physically disabled daughter who had taken up competitive swimming. Throughout her young life she had striven to be accepted by her peers. Not until she joined a swim team did she truly feel at home. Stillman was convinced that if swimming could accept her, then it could accept the kids at this elementary school, and they would be better for it.

The pool was decades old, 14-yards long, and about as water tight as a screen door. Nonetheless, Stillman saw opportunity. The kids wouldn’t know any better. It’s not as if they would walk on deck and say, “Hey, this pool is 11 yards short!” City funds would cover the repairs.

Stillman hoped for 30 kids. Two hundred and fifty showed up. The program has since grown to over 300 swimmers using seven public pools throughout the city. Success on a competitive level is starting to surface. One swimmer has an AA time. Ten others, according to Amy Nienhaus, the head coach, are approaching A times.

It hasn’t been all blue sky, however. Funding limits practice time and the number of coaches. The size of the program drops to 80 swimmers during the summer, here again due to lack of funding.

Yet despite its limitations, the program has embraced the kids and vice versa, exactly what Stillman envisioned. Meanwhile, it has pointed to the difficulty swimming faces when attempting to expand beyond its traditional base. The fault line is more economic than ethnic. If Swim Racers is any indication, inner city blacks and Hispanics will pursue swimming as avidly as any other sport. The problem is, many can't pay for it.

"It all has to be subsidized," says Nienhaus, "from goggles to transportation to meets, to USA Swimming fees. Everything."

As it is, Swim Racers holds practices three times a week, 90 minutes each, in mostly 20-yard pools. That's as far as government subsidies and corporate donations stretch. It's a noble effort in its own right, certainly, but far short of what it takes to develop upper-tier swimmers. How many other cities are willing to take on the financial burden Buffalo has, to say nothing of the extra expenses needed to put a program on equal footing with suburban clubs?

IF YOU BUILD IT THEY WILL COME

Jim Ellis has been running an inner-city program for the last 30 years. A black swimmer from Pittsburgh, he started coaching while attending college near Philadelphia. His goal initially was to instill discipline in young, black males. He expanded that goal in 1980 when he was put in charge of a new indoor facility built by the city. Discipline would still underpin his club, Philadelphia Department of Recreation, but for more than a social purpose. Ellis wanted his swimmers to compete against the best in America. By the late 1980s he had succeeded to the point that Norment called from Long Island.

"Jim Ellis had all of these black kids swimming fast, and they were swimming different events, not just the 50 free," Norment says. “I swam with PDR for a summer and came back with an entirely different mind-set. My training level stepped up tenfold."

Norment's father, a college professor, took a job with Temple University and moved with his son to Philadelphia so he could swim with PDR year-round. Michael won the 200-yard breaststroke at the junior nationals two years later. Teammate Jason Webb, another African-American, won the 200-yard backstroke. PDR won the men's medley relay. All three victories came in record times. Ellis had done the improbable: black coach, black swimmers, inner-city team, junior national titles.

Ellis' success, however, came with an ironic twist. As PDR's stature grew, its composition lightened to the point that it is no longer just a black swim club, but rather a diverse, quality team that happens to have a large percentage of black swimmers. At a practice of his senior group this fall, only half the swimmers were black. What's more, none came from neighborhoods that surround PDR's indoor facility in northern Philadelphia. PDR might be an inner-city club, but it's mostly middle class with yearly dues for each of its swimmers up to $725.

"What I need is a 50-meter pool and enough money so that I can walk away from my (high school) teaching job," Ellis says. "Give me both and I will rock and roll."

A good facility, a well-paid coach, and blacks and Hispanics, as well as a sizeable number of whites, will be knocking down Ellis' door. It's the model for increasing diversity within competitive swimming. The only thing missing is the money to make it happen, money the American swimming community doesn't have.

"I don't want to look at this as a black-white issue, or a rich-poor issue, but as an issue of access, both to the facilities to train and the coaches to run the programs," says Wielgus. "But we can't get in the business of building facilities. We don't have the financial resources to even think about that.”

NATURE TAKE ITS COURSE

Perhaps the best solution to swimming's diversity challenge would be simplest and the least expensive. Why not let nature take its course?

Giles Smith learned to swim at a local pool in a Baltimore suburb. He then joined a black club in Baltimore City "as a way to slowly bring him into the fold in an environment where he wouldn't feel strange," his father, Harold, says. "It was a place where he wouldn't be singled out."

After his abundant talent became apparent, Giles moved on to a more competitive club. His parents, solidly middle class, could afford the dues and the other expenses. Unlike Norment 12 years earlier, Giles didn't have to look to another state. Nearby was a club (CATY Barracudas) with 20 percent of its swimmers who were black. He's been thriving ever since. As a nine-year-old, he's within tenths of a second of AAAA times in two events.

"The only thing missing for Giles and other young black swimmers is a role model," says Harold Smith. "What we need is to get a black swimmer on an Olympic team."

Giles Smith represents the future of minority swimmers in America. As more like him move into the middle class, swimming will simply become another option rather than an exception. The number who choose to compete will increase steadily. It's inevitable. Whether it will be quick enough to satisfy outside organizations, however, is another matter.

As Wielgus said, the problems attendant to swimming and diversity are huge, expensive and political.