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From Collin Matiza in HAMBURG, Germany
IN another milestone achievement in her illustrious and glittering career, Zimbabwe’s swimming icon Kirsty Coventry has been inducted into Auburn Swimming and Diving Hall of Fame in the United States. According to reports from Austin in Texas, United States, Coventry, a seven-time Olympic Games medallist, was inducted at the weekend at Auburn State University with five other people at a colourful function on Saturday which was also attended by the coach who helped her to win two historic gold medals at the 2004 Athens Games in Greece and 2008 Beijing Games in China, Kim Brackin.
The other 2015 inductees are Olympic champion Eric Shanteau; the two coaches most responsible for the programme’s biggest swimming dynasties David Marsh and Richard Quick; one of the most popular coaches of the last 20 years and one who had a massive impact on the US Paralympic programme Jimi Flowers; and the man after whom Auburn’s pool is named Ralph Crocker.
At a programme with the swimming history of Auburn, every inductee is an impressive one, but the Auburn Swimming and Diving Hall of Fame Class of 2015 will stand against that history as a list of one of the greatest ever, according to one of the respected American swimming magazines, Swim Swam.
It reported at the weekend that Marsh, Zimbabwe’s Coventry and Shanteau are the three inductees in the Class of 2015, with Quick, Flowers and Crocker joining them as honorary inductees.
And at the weekend, Coventry was honoured for her exploits on the pool while she was a student at Auburn State University at the turn of the new millennium.
Coventry, who was a part of Auburn’s NCAA Championships in 2003 and 2004, scored more points than any other individual scorer at the 2015 NCAA Championship meet. She won NCAA Championships in the 200m individual medley, 400IM and 200 backstroke (twice), and went on to win seven Olympic medals, including back-to-back golds in the women’s 200m backstroke in 2004 and 2008 in Athens and Beijing.
These remarkable achievements helped her to become a hall of famer at Auburn State University’s Swimming and Diving Hall of Fame, making her a legend at this American swimming institution in the process.
The hall began in 1996 when it welcomed its first inductee: Rowdy Gaines. Since then, it has grown to 33 total members.
One of its inductees Marsh’s coaching record is unparalleled in collegiate swimming. In total, he led the Auburn Tigers to an NCAA record 12 national championships between the men’s and women’s teams, making him the most successful national coach in the history of the SEC in any sport, Swim Swam reported at the weekend.
In 2003, his Auburn men’s and women’s team both won NCAA titles – the first time this had ever happened. Marsh would go on to lead the Tigers to this feat four times in five years, repeating it in 2004, 2006, and 2007.
Marsh was also a swimmer at Auburn, where he earned five All-American honors as a backstroker and was the 1980 SEC Champion.
Shanteau’s swimming resume is also very impressive in its own right, and he won 11 All-American awards while at Auburn and qualified for two Olympic Teams. That includes a gold medal as part of the American 400 medley relay at the London Games in 2012.
He also has his name in the current World Record books as part of the 2009 World Championship 400 medley relay that improved the old mark by over two seconds, swimming 3:27.28.
For all of his swimming success, however, Shanteau might still be best remembered for the circumstances under which he had that success.
In 2008, a week before the 2008 Olympic Trials, he found out that he had testicular cancer. He opted to put-off treatment to contend for a spot, and ultimately made the team in the 200m breaststroke. Shanteau’s cancer has since gone into remission, and he’s become a high-level crusader for funding cancer research and treatment in the United States.
The three honorary inductees are also important parts of this programme’s history and success. Crocker was a long-time assistant with the programme and was the head of the 2001 USA Swimming National Team Distance Camp in Colorado Springs, and was also a member of the 1975 NCAA team.
Crocker passed away in 2007 at the age of 52.
The late Flowers was a former USA Swimming National Team Director from 1989-1983 and an assistant at Auburn from 1984-1989 and 1995-1999. Auburn head coach Brett Hawke once said that “Jimi Flowers’ enthusiasm and dedication for Auburn swimming and diving was paramount in the rise of our programme through the past few decades,” showing the impact he had on the programme.
Flowers’ biggest legacy, however, has been on the US Paralympics programme, where he was once the swim team manager and coach. In 2010, about a year after his death, the organization dedicated “Jimi’s Corner” to the many inspirational quotes that Flowers would bring to the pool every day, and the site has become one of the most revered monuments in swimming.
And finally, former Auburn head coach Quick stands alongside Marsh as two of the, if not the two, most successful coaches in NCAA history. He coached Team USA at the Olympics on six straight occasions from 1984-2004. He spent time coaching at SMU, Stanford, Texas, and Auburn, including a second stint at Auburn after the 2007 season. The record that Marsh’s 13 NCAA titles broke belonged to his former coach Quick, who had 12 total across the different programmes he led.
Quick also passed away in 2009.
Online Reporter