Origin of Masters Swimming in Connecticut & New England
Very early Master National Competitions Dottie and I returned from such a meet (can't remember exactly the date but it must have been within the first five six years of these unofficial - at that time- events.) While driving back home we bemoaned the fact that in the Northeast we were being unfairly penalized in such competitions because a) our short outdoors swimming season where we could join together as a local group, b)our long wintertime that made a lot of travelling distances for group practices unreasonable, c)our lack of indoor swimming facilities that were not privately owned - usually belong to high schools, boys clubs, YMCA, etc. who wanted their own members to form small 3 to 10 member masters groups to complete against other similar small groups that would see each other maybe 3-4 times a year. So here we were trying to compete against large southern groups with often county or community pools where 20-30 masters could practice together!
I came up with the idea of forming state organizations where each local team would be considered to be a branch of the state team, thus able to maintain the small local competition at home but be able to field relays and more age groups at nationals and also hold once a year competitions with nearby state groups.
Voila! Here was born NE Masters and Conn. Masters!!! --- and oh boy did we here grumbles and rebellion at the next 'national' meet we went to. It also meant that nearby NE states could cooperate to sponsor nationals which was totally beyond our local teams at that time.
First major attempts at large meets were to join kids swimming regionals and hold our events sandwiched in between the kids events. - Still remember our guys getting on the block and overhearing one 10 yr old say to another "Geez, look at the pot on that guy" and then hearing them shut up after our relay beat theirs!
from Enid Uhrich - 11/30/00
